LEADERSHIP 


"-GRESS 


ie      ewspaper 


Ages  of  Leif  i:e 


ALVMNW  BOOK  FYND 


LEADERSHIP  AND  PROGRESS 


Leadership  and  Progress 

AND 

OTHER  ESSAYS  OF  PROGRESS 

THE  NEWSPAPER  CONSCIENCE 
AGES   OF    LEISURE 


by 

ALFRED  H.  LLOYD 

« t 


1922 

THE  STRATFORD  COMPANY,  Publishers 
BOSTON,  MASSACHUSETTS 


Li 


Copyright,   1922 

The  STRATFORD  CO.,  Publishers 
Boston,   Masg. 


The  Alpine  PreBS,  Boston,  Mas*.,  U.  S.  A. 


To 

PBOGEESSIVE  LEADERSHIP  IN  RECENT  TIMES 


518886 


Preface 

WITH  the  two  essays  that  comprise  the 
first  part  of  this  book  and  that  have 
given  the  book  its  title,  the  first  deal- 
ing with  the  nature  and  genesis  of  progressive 
leadership  and  the  second  with  recent  oppor- 
tunities, I  have  ventured  to  associate  two  essays 
on  closely  related  themes.  Certainly  no  study  of 
leadership  and  progress  in  these  times  can 
properly  neglect  either  the  problem  of  the 
modern  newspaper,  so  indicative  of  the  prevail- 
ing mentality,  or  the  problem  of  leisure.  On 
a  people  's  leisure  depends  so  surely  the  success 
with  which  any  opportunities  are  met. 

Of  the  two  essays  on  Leadership  and  Progress 
the  first  has  already  been  published  in  The 
InternationalJournalof  Ethics,  Vol.  XXXII,  No. 
2.  Also,  the  essay  on  The  Newspaper  Conscience 
was  published  in  The  American  Journal  of 
Sociology,  Vol.  XXVII,  No.  2,  and  that  on  the 


PREFACE 

Ages  of  Leisure  in  the  same  journal,  Vol. 
XXVIII,  No.  2.  For  permission  to  make  use  of 
these  essays  here  I  wish  to  thank  the  editors  of 
the  two  journals. 

A.  H.  L. 
University  of  Michigan. 

September,  1922. 


Contents 


PART  I :  LEADERSHIP  AND  PROGRESS 

Page 

I     The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership      .      1 
II    Recent     Opportunities     of     Progressive 

Leadership 53 

PART  II :  Two  ESSAYS  OF  PROGRESS 

III  The  Newspaper  Conscience        .        .        .  107 

IV  Ages  of  Leisure 134 


PART  I 
LEADERSHIP  AND  PROGRESS 


I.  THE  NATURE  OF  PROGRESSIVE 
LEADERSHIP 

I. 

PROBABLY  no  one  will  question  that  the 
subject  of  this  first  essay,  The  Nature  of 
Progressive  Leadership,  is  a  very  timely 
one.    It  is  a  subject,  too,  that  might  very  pro- 
perly be  discussed  directly  and  concretely  with 
reference  to  the  recent  and  still  very  present 
call  for  progressive  leadership  in  our  own  coun- 
try or  the  world  over  and  to  the  important 
special   and   quite   practical   opportunities    of 
leadership  that  the  times  are  offering. 

That  call  has  been  an  urgent  one ;  at  least  not 
less  urgent,  too,  since  than  during  the  war. 
Moreover  the  last  great  political'  campaign,  not 
yet  forgotten,  somehow  has  only  emphasized, 
what  more  or  less  abstractly  most  of  us  are 
cognizant  of,  that  political  machinery  is  not 
always  adequate  to  the  real  needs  or  representa- 
tive of  the  real  life  of  a  people.  The  country's 


Leadership  and  Progress 

mood  was  what  it  was  and  outwardly  the  result 
at  both  of  the  two  great  conventions  as  well 
as  with  a  certain  peculiar  justice  at  the  final 
election  was  what  it  was,  more  reactionary  than 
progressive,  more  formal  and  external,  express- 
ing as  it  did  the  old  routine  and  status  quo,  than 
real,  neglecting  as  it  certainly  seemed  to  neglect 
the  actual  life  and  purposes  which  had  come 
to  expression  and  to  some  realization  during 
the  war.  Doubtless  some  good  purpose  has  been 
served  in  that  result.  Beneath  the  social  and 
political  surface,  however,  in  an  unusual  meas- 
ure there  has  been  a  pressure  of  life  not  yet 
properly  met. 

Thus  the  signs  of  these  post  bellum  times, 
covering  the  strenuous  months  since  November, 
1918,  can  not  be  overlooked,  however  outward 
and  official  events  would  seem  to  have  forgotten 
them;  such  signs,  I  mean,  as  are  marked  below 
and  as  doubtless  will  suggest  more  a  cartoon 
of  the  times  than  a  fair  and  accurate  picture, 
but  as  nevertheless  are  sufficiently  to  the  point 
to  demand  candid  consideration.  Consider  the 
great  reaction  following  the  war,  the  general  col- 
lapse, moral  and  economic  and  political,  the 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

world  over,  only  expressed  in  different  ways 
and  degrees  in  different  places;  the  assertive, 
however  blind,  conservatism,  revealing  an  old 
order  of  things  very  much  and  doubtless  very 
wisely  on  its  guard ;  the  new  pacifism,  very  dif- 
ferent indeed  from  the  ante  bellum  or  inter 
bellum  variety,  yet  hardly  more  creditable, 
dividing  both  political  parties  and  preferring 
dividends  and  other  normalities  to  courage  in 
meeting  great  issues,  isolation  to  unavoidable 
responsibility  and  the  fool's  paradise  of  the 
status  quo  generally  to  the  progress  and  even 
to  the  real  security  of  civilization;  the  fiddling 
partisanship,  the  honor  for  which  one  may  not 
presume  to  award,  more  mongering  in  its  cam- 
paigning than  honest  and  patriotic;  the  ouija 
board  mentality  or  the  general  spiritualism  — 
I  know  no  better  name  for  it  —  of  people  and 
press,  that  has  brought  so  much  "  automatic " 
thinking,  leaving  very  few  thinking  altogether 
honestly  and  quite  independently,  and  that  has 
turned  suspicions  and  charges  and  mere  wishes 
into  realities,  released  from  subconsciousness 
commonly  suppressed  passions  and  impulses 
and  set  up  for  belief  as  real  and  for  action  as 


Leadership  and  Progress 

worthy  what  has  been  ideally  or  unideally 
largely  a  fictitious  world,  any  mysterious  noise 
being  as  if  an  inspired  communication  from  it; 
and,  as  counterpart,  possibly  a  fortunate 
counteragent,  of  that  reactionary  but  futile  con- 
servatism, an  extravagant  and  equally  abstract 
and  impossible  idealism,  virtually  a  millennium- 
ism  not  confined  to  Russia  and  so  much  affected 
especially  by  those  who  have  suffered  most 
from  the  tyranny  of  the  past  or  from  the  de- 
privation and  general  hunger  of  the  present  and 
at  once  so  deceptive  and  so  alluring,  so  like  a 
mirage  and  yet  so  impelling  to  "  direct  action " 
and  unpremeditated  adventure.  Consider  all 
these  marks  of  our  times.  Surely  in  them  one 
reads  an  urgent  call  for  leadership.  The  old 
order  is  not  merely  on  trial.  A  new  life  is  in- 
sisting on  recognition  and  interpretation. 

As  for  specific  opportunities  of  a  progressive 
leadership  at  the  present  time  these  lie,  among 
other  things,  in  our  new  nationalism,  so  real 
and  so  active  today,  although  so  many  still 
refuse  to  recognize  it  fully  and  squarely,  and 
the  accompanying  new  internationalism,  which 
as  league  or  association  or  union  or  confereree 

[4] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

or  understanding  or  whatever  any  of  the  various 
partisans  would  call  it,  must  accord  with  the  * 
nation's  new  life;  in  the  new  status  of  labor, VX 
already  now  real  and  active,  which  requires  not 
destruction  of  the  present  industrial  system 
but  only  escape  from  industrial  Toryism  and 
candid  and  sympathetic  recognition  of  labor's 
participation  in  industry,  a  change  that,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  quite  analogous  to  political  sub- 
jects receiving  certain  equal  rights  and,  as  se- 
curity of  these,  the  right  to  vote ;  and  in  develop- 
ment of  a  saner  public  mentality,  that  so  we 
may  be  free  from  the  mongering  partisanship 
of  the  past  years,  from  propagandism  and  the 
"automatism,"  and  get,  among  other  benefits, 
a  more  responsible  and  reliable  public  press. 


t5] 


H. 

BUT,  appropriate  as  such  direct  and  con- 
crete discussion  might  be,  I  defer  this 
for  a  later  essay.  My  present  purpose, 
although  suggested  by  the  conditions  and  oppor- 
tunities indicated  above,  is  quite  abstract 
discussion.  In  just  what  in  general  does  real 
forward  leadership  consist?  Whence,  at  any 
time,  under  any  conditions  and  opportunities, 
comes  a  progressive  leader?  This  timely  ques- 
tion I  would  now  answer  quite  abstractly; 
apart,  then,  from  our  nationally  local  affairs  or 
from  present  affairs  of  the  world  at  large;  so 
far  as  possible,  except  for  occasional  illustration 
from  present  or  past,  without  regard  to  actual 
conditions  anywhere  or  anywhen.  Such  an 
undertaking  has  admitted  dangers;  but  it  has 
real  advantages  also. 

General  history  seems  to  show  for  any  one 
of  all  the  many  departments  of  life  that  the 
greatest  leaders,  indeed  all  real  leaders  or  even, 
as  I  venture  to  believe,  all  individuals  so  far 

[6] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

as  they  ever  lead  instead  of  just  follow,  are  in 
some  sense  "born,  not  made,"  not  machine-  I/ 
made.  So  are  they  in  the  noble  company  of  the 
poets,  of  all  geniuses.  Genius  is,  of  course, 
close  to  life  and  so  "born."  Even  in  the  rare 
cases  of  apparent  machine  production  or  selec- 
tion, if  any  such  cases  there  have  been,  the 
seeming  result  has  hardly  been  due,  whatever 
some  may  find,  to  the  mere  traditional,  undis- 
turbed social,  political  and  intellectual  machin- 
ery. Eather  has  this  machinery  shown  a  more 
discreet  than  valorous  response  to  some  re- 
leased and  overpowering  vital  demand.  Doubt- 
less, in  a  life  which  is  always  more  or  less  of 
an  adventure,  good  fortune  will  sometimes  play 
a  part.  Formally  chosen  leaders  have  some- 
times belied  the  conditions  of  their  making. 
Still,  in  essential  principle,  which  is  what  we 
now  seek,  great  leadership  of  any  sort  is  quite 
too  vital  and  original  or  creative  and  is,  while 
not  "supernatural,"  at  least  quite  too  truly 
super-mechanical  ever  to  be  merely  machine- 
made.  A  growing  social  life  has  abundant  need 
of  machinery  of  all  kinds,  political,  economic, 

[7] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

intellectual  and  the  rest;  but  it  would  cease  to 
grow  had  it  nothing  else. 

What  it  is  not  to  be  machine-made,  to  be 
"born,  not  made,"  is  not  at  all  easy  to  say.  You 
who  now  read  may  know  or  rather  "feel"  what 
it  is.  You  would  not  be  able  to  tell  any  one  very 
glibly.  So  often  used,  the  phrase  is  far  from 
being  transparent.  In  times  past,  in  pre- 
evolution  days,  anything  new  and  unusual  had 
a  very  different  accounting  from  that  of  today. 
Even  today,  for  that  matter,  many  people,  fail- 
ing to  have  adjusted  their  ideas  or  values  to  the 
time,  may  still  think  of  birth  in  general  and 
in  particular  historically  and  socially  of  the 
birth  of  the  great  as  nothing  less  than  a  super- 
natural event,  a  miracle.  All  of  us  have  looked 
down  wonderingly  into  the  faces  of  "new 
arrivals"  or  "little  strangers"  from  another 
world  and  the  great  leaders  have  been  looked 
up  to  in  much  the  same  spirit.  In  that  spirit 
with  its  awe  before  the  miracle  of  birth,  such 
people,  or  we  ourselves,  would  say  that  an  in- 
dividual born  to  lead,  was  not  a  creature  of  his 
time ;  had  no  natural  origin ;  was  ' '  ahead  of  his 
times,"  out  of  touch  with  them,  in  but  not  of 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

them  —  in  short,  begotten  not  of  the  facts  and 
conditions  in  actual  and  visible  life,  but  of  the 
Spirit;  the  Spirit  of  history,  perhaps,  or  the 
great  Spirit  of  an  ideal  civilization,  provided 
this  be  so  ideal  as  to  be  something  independent 
of  all  natural  causes.  Today,  however,  on  the 
whole  a  very  different  view  prevails.  Evolu- 
tion, even  the  newer  evolution,  which  has  per- 
haps more  respect  for  wonders  and  creation, 
has  dispensed  with  distinctly  external  and,  in 
the  orthodox  sense,  supernatural  origins ;  being, 
not  at  any  point  supernatural,  but  only  super- 
mechanical.  Today,  while  leaders  and  other 
specially  vital  agents  are  not  made,  while  new 
birth  in  general  is  no  affair  of  mere  develop- 
ment-mechanics, known  east  of  the  Ehine  by  the 
way  as  EntwicJcelungsmechanik,  perhaps  not  a 
bad  synonym  for  Kultur,  today  a  'certain  signifi- 
cant and  effective  cooperation  of  the  vital  super- 
mechanical  forces  and  the  merely  mechanical, 
a  certain  timely  and  critical,  always  creative 
and  in  parvo  or  in  multo  epoch-making  conjunc- 
tion of  broad  free  life  and  the  machinery  of  life, 
is  candidly  and  commonly  recognized.  Attend- 
ing such  conjunction,  it  is  true,  there  are  always 

[9] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

disturbances,  disorders  of  many  kinds,  often 
much  suffering  and  tragedy;  but  these  can  be 
only  the  cost,  as  determined  by  the  time  and  the 
mood,  of  the  new  life.  Birth  can  never  be  easy. 
The  adventure  of  it  is  far  too  great.  Today, 
then,  the  great  visitors,  even  as  the  little  ones, 
are  candidly  the  results  of  important  and  nat- 
ural, however  mysterious  and  however  strenu- 
ous, gestation  and  delivery;  and,  as  I  would 
add,  they  are  more  wonderful  and,  at  least  when 
the  pains  and  labor  of  the  birth  are  over,  more 
honored  and  loved,  not  less  so,  on  that  account. 
Not  just  formally  made,  not  conventionally  re- 
ceived and  recognized,  they  are  also  not  too 
suddenly  born  nor  too  hastily  exalted.  How 
wonderful  is  nature  in  her  own  right,  what  a 
surpassing  miracle  there  is  in  all  natural  birth, 
many  people  have  still  to  realize.  The  natural 
birth  of  leaders,  as  of  infants,  is  spiritually  more 
inspiring,  more  worth  while,  than  the  miracle 
that  used  to  be  or  be  supposed. 

Can  I  make  still  clearer  what  I  would  under- 
stand by  " being  born,  not  made?"  History, 
even  very  commonplace  history,  should  be 
illuminating.  The  best  and  most  widely  known 

[10] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

great  leaders  in  the  past  certainly  were  not  born 
in  any  sense  of  being  suddenly  given  to  history 
as  if  from  outside  and  of  not  being  affected 
at  all  by  existing  conditions  and  forces.  Moses, 
real  leader  of  his  people  into  a  new  country  and 
a  new  life,  was  also  definitely  an  Israelite  of  the 
Egyptian  captivity.  Socrates,  an  intellectual 
genius,  was  still  a  Greek,  an  Athenian,  who  con- 
stantly showed,  sometimes  too  well,  that  he  had 
been  to  school  to  the  talented  but  opportunistic 
Sophists  of  the  fifth  century,  B.  C.  Ahead  of 
his  times  in  some  sense,  he  nevertheless  met  his 
times  in  kind,  with  weapons  then  in  vogue. 
What  his  discredited  contemporaries  were,  he 
was  also;  skeptic,  individualist,  utilitarian,  in- 
tellectual gymnast,  logomachist.  Simply  they 
were  only  talented  and  conventional;  he,  real 
prince  of  them  all,  was  the  true  genius,  still 
dependent  on  their  manner.  Christ,  in  spite  of 
certain  modern  sects,  as  forgetful  and  sectarian 
as  modern,  who  would  make  him  Presbyterian 
or  Unitarian  or  what  not,  was  in  reality,  what- 
ever the  depth  of  his  experience  and  vision,  a 
first  century  Jew  of  Bethlehem  and  Jerusalem ; 
and  the  genius  of  Christianity,  born  then,  has 


Leadership  and  Progress 

grown  with  history,  not  existed  and  persisted 
fixedly  as  something  apart  from  it.  Again,  the 
Caesars,  from  Julius  to  Constantine,  were 
transition,  pagan-Christian  Eomans.  Napoleon 
was  distinctly  French ;  Lincoln  was  so  superbly 
American;  and  so  on.  None  of  these  leaders 
came  to  their  several  peoples  and  times  or  to 
their  several  departments  of  life,  not  one  en- 
tered history,  just  at  random  and  from  outside, 
independently  of  conditions.  Rather  each  came, 
as  that  most  luminous  phrase  has  it,  "in  the 
fullness  of  time."  Each,  it  is  true,  was  "born, 
not  made";  yet  for  each  one,  in  his  own  way 
and  measure  an  epoch-maker,  producing  a  new 
life  not  commensurable  with  the  old  life,  there 
was  an  important  and  a  by  no  means  easy  period 
of  gestation  during  which  the  formal,  organ- 
ized life,  the  machinery  of  life  took  an  important 
part. 


[12] 


. 


III. 

THE  fullness  of  time,  so  called,  can  be  only 
the  climax  of  the  period  of  gestation  and 
what  this  climax  is,  what  conditions 
finally  bring  it  about,  may  be  shown  in  several 
ways.  Thus,  to  begin  with,  in  social  and  politi- 
cal life,  as  in  life  generally,  there  is  at  the 
critical  time  that  special  coming  together, 
already  referred  to,  of  life  and  its  machinery, 
vital  interest  and  the  formal  and  traditional 
visible  organization.  Any  organization,  mean- 
ing now  any  institutional  fabric  of  an  estab- 
lished social  life,  while  in  its  origin  marking 
some  adaptation  and  articulation  of  life,  can 
not  fail,  as  it  persists,  to  become  too  rigid  and 
so  to  bring  about  a  certain  artificiality  or  duplic- 
ity, a  certain  separation  of  essential  purpose 
or  meaning  and  outer  manner,  of  life  and  its 
dress.  Life  always  gets  both  broader  and 
deeper  than  its  adopted  outward  expression  and 
so  gets  double,  appearing  one  thing  when  it  is 
another.  Sooner  or  later,  then,  that  division 

[13] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

and  the  duplicity  of  it  have  to  cease.  The  vital 
refuses  to  be  so  set  aside,  or  hidden  when  not 
quite  restrained,  and  it  asserts  itself  in  and 
through  the  formal;  with  the  result  that  the 
classic,  rigid  organization  gives  way.  What  had 
been  clothing  and  protecting  life  at  least  no 
longer  hides  it.  Fluency,  adaptability,  instabil- 
ity, open  inconsistency,  even  violence  and 
treachery  come  to  be  very  general  in  the  life  of 
customs  and  institutions.  Long  accustomed 
associations  and  divisions  are  broken  up.  Un- 
certainty appears  in  the  old  lines  of  class  or 
party  or  race.  Normal  living  becomes  a  vital 
issue  and  even  common  reason  and  its  logic 
suffer  discomfiture  when  not  complete  undoing. 
Do  you  doubt  that  such  changes  are  natural  to 
life  and  history  I  Your  own  personal  experience 
and  common  historical  record  must  be  my  wit- 
nesses. Also  our  own  times  are  quite  eloquent. 
The  growth  of  thought,  too,  shows  something 
quite  analogous  to  the  growth  of  the  conduct 
of  life.  Under  whatever  constraints  of  form 
and  content,  of  method  and  meaning,  thinking 
after  a  time  has  ever  to  develop  its  contradic- 
tions, paradoxes,  inconsistencies.  Like  life,  it 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

gets  quite  too  big  or  too  deep  and  essential  for 
any  form  of  articulation  and  in  the  fullness  of 
thought,  as  one  might  put  it,  any  accepted  man- 
ner or  form  has  to  break  down  and  thought 
itself  to  become  rather  essential  than  outwardly 
and  formally  consistent.  The  inconsistency  may 
give  opportunity  to  much  loose  and  irrespon- 
sible thinking,  but  also  it  may  herald  new  think- 
ing and  great  discovery.  Thus  the  appreciative 
student  of  the  history  of  thought  feels  no  sur- 
prise at  finding  great  paradoxes,  with  much  use 
of  antitheses  or  of  bold  contradictions,  among 
the  Greeks  in  the  fifth  century,  B.  C.,  or  in 
Christendom  during  the  Napoleonic  era  and 
what  followed,  when  —  in  each  instance  —  both 
new  thought  and  new  life  were  coming  to  their 
birth.  Consider,  also,  how  at  any  time,  when 
new  life  is  due,  among  a  people  with  the  pass- 
ing of  the  old  standards  there  is  always  much 
confusing  of  reform  and  treachery,  perhaps  of 
salvation  and  malef action  —  as  if  these  two 
could  ever  really  look  alike !  —  or  of  real  leader- 
ship and  violence,  obstinacy,  arbitrariness.  In 
actual  history,  again,  familiar  to  us  all  and  per- 
taining to  great  epochal  changes,  new  life  has 

[is] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

been  no  respecter  of  Greek  and  Barbarian,  Jew 
and  Gentile,  Roman  and  Peregrine,  White  and 
Black,  narrow  nationalist  and  foreigner.  At 
such  times,  critical  times,  a  period  of  gestation 
can  be  seen  at  its  climax  and  new  life  to  be  near 
realization. 

But,  helpful  as  is  such  an  understanding  of 
the  fullness  of  time,  of  gestation  and  the  life 
that  is  not  merely  made  but  also  born,  that  is 
superior  to  form  and  institution,  although  com- 
ing from  or  through  these,  there  is,  secondly,  a 
way  of  putting  the  case  which  seems  to  me  even 
more  helpful.  The  gestation  and  the  fullness 
of  time,  which  bring  new  life  to  birth,  are  when 
there  has  come  to  the  life  of  custom  and  institu- 
tion, to  what  some  would  call  the  system,  with 
a  pressure  no  longer  to  be  resisted  the  need 
of  reading  between  the  lines.  It  is  true  that 
such  need  is  more  or  less  pressing  all  the  time. 
For  long  intervals,  however,  the  meaning  of 
life's  pronounced  and  classic  lines,  of  its  out- 
ward system  and  routine,  is  and  well  may  be 
pretty  much  taken  for  granted.  Slight  differ- 
ences and  issues  and  uncertainties  may  appear ; 
but  only  with  great  crises,  involving  large,  gen- 

[16] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

eral  and  certain  changes,  very  much,  I  submit, 
as  in  our  own  day,  does  the  pressure  become  a 
real  and  general  necessity,  profound  and  irre- 
sistible. 

Very  plainly  the  lines  of  life  are  destined 
to  accumulate  new  meaning.  New  meaning, 
indeed,  is  even  a  purpose,  not  merely  a  destiny, 
of  real  life.  In  good  time,  too,  the  pangs  and 
the  strain  of  the  new  meaning  acquired  have 
to  be  felt.  The  very  process,  already  described 
here,  showing  how  custom  and  institution  lose 
their  rigor  and  rigidity,  as  well  as  their  opaque- 
ness, even  to  the  point  of  open  inconsistency 
and  abnormality  and  startling  transparency, 
has  afforded  indisputable  evidence  of  this.  Also 
it  should  be  remarked  that  every  individual  per- 
son, although  a  conforming  member  of  society, 
is  an  active  agent  of  the  accumulation  and  at 
any  time  may  break  out,  giving  evidence  of  his 
different  life  and  experience.  In  miniature  any 
formal  gathering  of  persons,  spite  of  the  uni- 
formities of  dress  and  manner,  of  speech  and 
interest,  illustrates  this.  Always  there  will  be 
some  disclosures  of  differences  of  meaning  for 
the  accepted  common  routine.  Some  restlessness 

[17] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

and   some   abnormality   are    as   inevitable    as 
desirable,  possibly  also  as  ominous  in  their  time 
as  they  may  be  opportune.  Much  of  the  restless- 
ness may  be  ascribed  to  mere  nervousness,  to  a 
fatigue  that  has  weakened  control  or  to  the 
more  casual  peculiarities  of  person  for  which 
society  always  makes  allowance,  even  conceding 
some  merit  to  them;  but  even  this  restlessness 
is    a    symptom    of    something    more    import- 
ant and  often  it  springs,  not  from  mere  nervous- 
ness or  fatigue  or  personal  peculiarity,  but  from 
a  nobler  and  more  positive  disquietude  due  to 
some  one's  new  and  significant  vision  and  pur- 
pose.     There    is    a    conventional    intercourse 
among  people  gathered  together  with  its  many 
superficial  outbreaks  of  individual  experiences 
or  adaptations  and  there  is  a  quickening  and 
creative  intercourse  with  more  important  out- 
breaks; but  in  either  we  can  see,  ever  present 
and  developing,  inner  meaning  for  life's  lines. 
The  miniature  case  only  illustrates  a  truth  of 
all   human   association.     The   outbreaks   may 
commonly  be  only  sporadic,  but,  the  conditions 
of  outbreak  being  the  heritage  of  all  and  all 
having  their  places  and  parts  in  one  and  the 

[18] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

same  life,  the  time  must  come  when  a  general 
release  will  be  required,  and,  as  was  said,  the 
demand  be  made  that  the  general  new  meaning 
accumulated  for  the  lines  of  life  be  read  out 
and  made  articulate. 

I  am  inclined  to  wonder  if  this  inner  life 
now  under  discussion  and  as  to  its  presence  and 
importance  questioned,  I  am  sure,  by  no  one, 
be  not  in  reality  a  factor,  a  neglected  factor,  of 
the  subconscious  of  which  we  are  hearing  so 
much  in  these  days  of  psycho-analysis  and 
anthropological  revelation  generally.  Is  it  not, 
indeed,  a  symptom  of  the  times  and  their  crises 
that  we  are  enjoying  —  is  that  the  right  word? 

-  so  much  exposure  1    Yet,  as  I  hasten  to  add, 
I  wonder  also  if  popularly  and  even  by  many  of 
the  experts  who  have  told  us  about  it,  the  sub- 
conscious have  not  been — here  being  the  neglect 

-  conceived  quite  too  narrowly.    Name  though 
it  seems  to  be  for  instinct  or  primitive  nature, 
for  suppressed  desires  and  hidden  and  mys- 
terious complexes,  for  long  forgotten  or  even 
never  consciously  noticed  experiences,  for  what 
when   disclosed   appears   abnormal   and   irra- 
tional, I  wonder  if  it  should  not  be  understood 

[19] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

in  a  larger  way  or,  again,  if  instinct  and  primi- 
tive nature  and  the  various  hidden  complexes 
and  mysteries  of  life  should  not  be  seen  as  not 
necessarily  bases  of  at  once  abnormal  and 
degenerate  conditions  but  sometimes  of  coming 
and  positively  progressive  new  life.  Suppres- 
sion of  course  does  breed  and  sooner  or  later 
must  induce  exposure  of  a  so-called  abnormal 
life;  but  this  abnormal  life  seems  to  me  of 
ambiguous  significance.  Often  it  may  mean 
only  so  much  breaking  down,  so  much  lost  con- 
trol and  consequent  unpleasant  exposure;  but 
sometimes  conceivably  it  may  mean  real  vision 
and  promise  of  something  new  and  worthy. 
Conditions,  again,  inducing  a  state  of  automat- 
ism in  an  individual  will  disclose  the  subcon- 
scious, as  we  are  being  made  familiar  with  it; 
but  man's  creative  and  constructive  will  ought 
to  be,  to  say  the  least,  concerned  with  the  sub- 
conscious also  and  with  its  accumulated  com- 
plexes quite  as  much  and  quite  as  properly  as 
his  degenerate  moods  of  relaxation,  reaction 
and  automatism.  Ordinary  professional  psycho- 
analysis, then,  may  be  only  so  much  concern 
over  pathological  cases;  but  I  have  to  think 

[20] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

that  there  is  a  natural  and  even  deliberate 
searching  or  intimate  analysis  incident  to  all 
living  under  the  suppression  or  say  now  under 
the  control  and  direction  of  law  and  order.  Out 
of  such  control,  I  mean,  must  come  some  real 
new  vision.  Civilization  and  its  restraints  are 
often  referred  to  as  causes  of  abnormal  condi- 
tions, mental  and  moral,  and  doubtless  they  are ; 
but  also  they  do  make  for  new  life  and  fuller 
and  better  understanding  as  well.  Super-con- 
servative people,  it  may  be  suspected,  will  be 
prone  to  regard  the  sub-conscious  wherever  ex- 
posed, as  abnormal  or  "  supernatural "  and  as 
significant  only  either  physically  or  spiritu- 
alistically;  but,  once  more,  it  may  often  have 
other  more  positive  values.  It  may  be  poten- 
tial with  what  is  more  civilized,  mentally  and 
morally  sounder,  than  the  conscious  and  normal 
life  of  the  time. 

Psycho-analysis,  then,  need  not  be  merely 
diagnostic  and  therapeutic  and  the  sex,  which 
with  special  interest  and  emphasis  it  reveals, 
or  more  generally  the  life-urge  or  the  elan  vital, 
however  original  or  primitive,  we  may  surely 
believe  is  as  spiritual  as  physical,  as  capable 

[21] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

of  sublimating  complexes  as  of  degenerate  com- 
plexes, as  truly  an  earnest  of  progress  as  an 
evidence  of  degeneration.  Also  reading  between 
the  lines  of  life  now  appears  to  be  a  psycho- 
analytical undertaking;  but  it  is  not  necessarily 
only  diagnostic  of  trouble  and  therapeutic  in  its 
purpose.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  critical  time, 
the  fullness  of  time,  when  a  clear  reading  be- 
tween the  lines  is  demanded,  be  a  time  of  much 
mental  and  moral  disease  and  exposure,  this 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  An  abnormal  time 
must  always  have  its  growing  pains,  its  grow- 
ing troubles  and  its  sacrifices.  Change  breeds 
disease,  death  itself,  as  well  as  progress  and 
new  life. 

Applied  to  familiar  affairs  in  our  own  time 
what  we  have  been  finding  about  the  accumula- 
tion and  growing  pressure  of  new  meaning  for 
the  lines  of  life  and  the  eventually  critical  need 
of  having  this  meaning  openly  read  accords 
fully  with  statements  made  recently  by  Viscount 
Bryce  among  many  others  and  with  what  any 
one  of  us  knows  well.  Truly  and  irretrievably 
our  country,  not  to  say  the  world  as  a  whole, 
is  in  a  time  potential  with  certain  changes. 

[22] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

Some  see  serious  reversion  and  degeneracy,  for 
there  is  so  much  exposed  that  offends;  some, 
progress ;  there  is  so  much  hope  and  ideal  pos- 
sibility.    Inwardly  and  outwardly,  offensively 
too  and  attractively,  our  life  is  now  really  differ- 
ent and  the  changes  which  are  to  come  —  just 
here  possibly  lying  the  real  crisis  of  the  time  — 
can  be  in  the  main  only  that  the  accompanying 
consciousness  and  the  assisting  machinery  of 
life  may  effect  an  adjustment  of  conscious  pur- 
pose and  organization  to  the  new  and,  however 
unnoticed  or  still  inarticulate,  already  active 
life  that  is  ours.    Simply  we  have  come  to  the 
climax  of  a  period  of  gestation,  involving  a 
most  varied  and  expanding  experience.    Exten- 
sive travel,  far-reaching  commercial  exploita- 
tion,  hard   and  most   searching   struggles    of 
capital  and  labor,  years  of  the  meltingpot  and 
its  attempted  but  still  very  inadequate  although 
very  instructive  efforts  at  Americanization,  his- 
torical study,  history  being  now  world-history 
and  no  longer  for  any  group  just  national  or 
racial  history  or  even  just  occidental  history  or 
just  special  history  of  any  sort,  most  extensive 
scientific   study   and   invention   and  last,   but 

[23] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

hardly  the  least,  the  Great  War  giving  brutal 
concreteness  to  our  new  world  and  its  actual 
new  life,  —  all  these  have  put  into  the  tradi- 
tional lines  of  life  such  a  pressure  of  new  mean- 
ing that  no  one  can  wonder  at  the  present 
unrest  and  confusion,  at  the  sordid  revelation 
and  the  great  ideals  in  the  changing,  irresistibly 
new  life  of  the  day.  Morally,  mentally,  eco- 
nomically, politically,  is  it  indeed  disease  or 
progress  that  we  are  confronting?  Whichever 
it  be,  we  are,  as  to  either,  finding  out  our  sub- 
conscious life. 


IV. 


NOR  —  witness  again  the  brutal  evidence 
of  the  Great  War  or  especially  many 
events  since  —  has  the  new  life  or  mean- 
ing, now  forcing  itself  on  our  attention,  been 
by  any  means  only  an  inner  thing.  In  saying 
that  the  fullness  of  time  or  the  climax  in  the 
process  of  gestation  was  when  need  came  to 
life  to  read  between  the  lines,  I  was  but  using 
a  metaphor  that  of  course  could  not  go  on  all 
fours.  Thus  in  general  the  critical  time,  the 
new  life,  as  in  fact  so  much  already  said  here  has 
implied,  must  at  least  symptomatically  be  al- 
ready at  large  and  positively  in  the  open,  hav- 
ing its  abundant  witnesses  in  all  the  agencies 
of  protest  and  opposition  to  the  old  order  and 
all  the  abnormalities,  degenerate  or  progressive. 
Such  typical  isms  as  anarchism,  protestant  in- 
dividualism, skepticism,  materialism,  spiritual- 
ism, abstract  idealism,  natural  to  any  crisis,  are 
all  signs  if  not  always  direct  and  active  agents 
of  it  and,  obstinate  and  concrete  factors  of  life 

05] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

as  they  all  are,  they  show  not  merely  a  new 
inner  life  but  also  a  new  environment.  Accord- 
ingly the  problem  of  the  new  time  is  no  mere 
academic  reading  between  old  lines,  to  be  ac- 
complished in  the  cloisters  or  even  in  the  legis- 
lative chambers  of  some  isolated  existence,  but 
is  an  adequate  and  responsible  and  open  recog- 
nition of  the  new  facts  and  relations,  an  effec- 
tive adaptation  to  the  new  environment  that 
lies,  so  to  speak,  l  i  out  there. ' '  In  other  words, 
again  to  speak  directly  of  our  own  times,  while 
it  is  still  true  that  we  already  have  a  new  life 
implicit  in  our  old  ways  and  pressing  for  clear 
articulation,  we  have  also,  as  really  an  intimate 
incident  of  this  and  as  a  distinct  challenge  not 
to  be  denied,  a  new  social  and  political,  moral 
and  economic  environment.  Reading  between 
old  lines,  then,  is  only  half  of  the  need.  Naming 
new  things,  formulating  behavior  with  refer- 
ence to  a  new  world,  the  life  of  which  is  now  to 
be  lived  and  served,  is  the  other  half.  This 
new  strange  world,  now  so  definitely  and  con- 
cretely a  challenge,  this  new  and  still  un- 
christened  life,  until  recent  times  so  beyond 
ken,  must  be  given  its  appropriate  name,  its 

[26] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

honest  and  adequate  accounting,  from  the  vo- 
cabulary, from  the  social  and  economic  and 
political  ideas  at  command.  Moreover,  if  you 
will  but  think  a  moment,  you  will  appreciate 
that  nothing  more  effectively  than  the  naming 
of  something  outside  and  strange  can  insure 
that  needed  full  inner  reading  of  life's  old  lines. 
Nothing  so  well  brings  out  of  life  what  is  really 
in  it  as  the  need  of  meeting  something  quite 
outside  and  new.  With  something  strange  to 
account  for,  one  can  no  longer  just  pore  over 
old  formulae  for  their  merely  consistent  im- 
plications. The  continued  use  of  the  old 
language  in  the  new  world  calls  for  something 
much  deeper. 

Thanks  to  the  Book  of  Genesis  and  Mark 
Twain,  with  possibly  a  little  help  from  outside, 
we  have  a  sort  of  myth  or  fable,  which,  as  it  is 
fully  appreciated,  will  seem  quite  apt  here  and 
also  will  touch  our  theme  with  a  pleasant 
humor.  Old  names  or  formulae  even  for  wholly 
new  things,  very  fortunately  I  am  sure,  are 
quite  unavoidable,  and  are  often  as  humorous 
as  startling,  whatever  else  may  be  said  of  them 
and  their  value.  Humor,  you  know,  is  one  of 


Leadership  and  Progress 

the  acolytes  of  truth.  But  to  the  fable :  Adam 
and  Eve,  as  every  one  has  learned  by  this  time, 
once  set  out  on  a  tour  of  the  Garden  for  the 
special  purpose  of  naming  the  various  creatures 
in  it.  The  task,  difficult  as  it  must  have  been, 
simply  had  to  be  undertaken.  Practically 
everything  was  loose  and  strange  in  those  days. 
Novelty  was  the  rule.  For  a  while  the  couple 
got  on  without  serious  difficulty;  but  before  one 
specimen,  Adam,  the  mere  man,  was  more  than 
ordinarilyiat  a  loss,  hesitant  and  skeptical,  quite 
unable  to  get  the  right  name.  The  right  name 
simply  was  not  to  be  found  in  his  pocket  dic- 
tionary, if  one  may  speak  so  figuratively.  But 
Eve  relied  on  her  intuition  or  genius  and  this, 
most  fortunately  synonymous  with  one  of 
Adam 's  ribs,  was  equal  to  the  emergency. 

4 'Call  it  a  galli-wasp,"  she  exclaimed  confi- 
dently; "That's  what  it  is." 

"Really,"  protested  Adam,  "Why  should 
we?  How  do  you  know  it's  that!  We  have 
never  used  that  word  that  way  before." 

"You  dear  old  normal  fool,"  retorted  the 
man's  rib,  "Call  it,  I  say,  a  galli-wasp.  It's 

[28] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

new  and  strange,  I  admit ;  but  it  just  does  look 
like  one." 

And  galli-wasp  it  has  been  ever  since.  Won- 
derful discovery,  that  made  by  Eve !  Far  and 
keen  her  recognition!  The  new  and  newly 
named  never  can  be  anything  but  the  old  reborn. 
Only,  as  the  fable  proves,  it  takes  genius,  far- 
seeing  leadership,  so  to  name  what  is  distinctly 
new. 

Moreover,  perhaps  only  parenthetically,  with 
regard  to  the  fable,  some  may  take  it  very  ser- 
iously and  find  no  accident  in  the  fact  that  it 
was  the  woman  in  that  historic  naming  who 
led  the  man  home,  giving  him  the  familiar  name 
for  the  strange  creature.  Certainly  women  are 
quite  as  progressive  as  men ;  they  are  really  not 
more  conservative,  spite  of  a  certain  reputation 
to  the  contrary;  but  they  are  more  easily  home- 
sick, domestic,  intuitive,  awake  to  the  new  as 
the  real  deeper  meaning  of  the  old;  and  so,  at 
least  by  the  fable,  in  times  of  crisis  and  transi- 
tion, when  great  leadership  is  called  for,  history 
should  somehow  provide  specially  for  the  im- 
portant service  of  their  intuition  or  domestic 
influence.  Almost  I  wonder  if  it  has  not.  Some 


Leadership  and  Progress 

one  might  very  well  make  a  study  of  history  from 
this  point  of  view.  How  far  in  other  historic 
cases  of  the  naming  of  new  things  out  of  an  old 
vocabulary,  of  restoring  new  life  to  old  lines  or 
reading  the  old  lines  for  their  developed  new 
meaning,  has  the  influence  of  woman  been  a 
significant  factor?  If  only  to  humor  such 
speculation,  one  might  infer,  not  only  that  every 
man  who  would  really  lead  must  have  his  Eve, 
but  also  that  woman's  part  in  the  coming  of 
new  life  can  not  be  supposed  to  be  merely  and 
narrowly  biological. 

That  fable,  if  as  a  fable  it  really  may  be 
taken  seriously,  is  obviously  meant  to  be  much 
more  than  a  possible  tribute  to  Eve  and  her 
persuasion  generally.  It  is,  too,  more  than  just 
a  humorous  account  of  the  great  and  important 
truth  that  new  things  in  life  and  history  must 
always  be  seen  or  met  with  old  forms  and  so, 
as  they  are  really  new  and  outwardly  obtrusive, 
must  challenge  intuition  rather  than  mere 
reason,  the  common  spirit  of  mere  reason  always 
being  too  conservative  and  legalistic.  Only 
intuition  can  use  the  old  without  slavery  to  its 
letter  and  with  realism  and  concreteness.  At 

[30] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

least  in  the  context  of  the  present  study  of 
leadership  and  progress  the  fable  suggests, 
besides  those  other  things,  perhaps  as  only  a 
special  inference  from  the  important  truth 
about  the  old  for  the  new,  that  a  progress, 
which  calls  at  once  for  the  inner  reading  of  old 
ways  and  for  the  traditional  accounting  of 
strange  things,  as  actual  as  strange,  must 
always  show  a  certain  genuine  domesticity. 
What  Eve  really  did,  as  has  been  suggested, 
was  to  lead  Adam  home  or  to  make  him  at  home 
in  the  presence  of  something  real  and  strange 
and  progress  without  such  domesticity,  with- 
out a  return,  not  to  the  mere  roof,  but  to  the 
great  spirit  of  home,  is  only  prodigality.  There 
is  real  truth  and  so  real  salvation  of  thought 
or  life  only  in  the  awakening  that  the  new 
strange  thing  after  all  really  is  like  some  old 
familiar  thing.  Riotous  living,  upheaval,  vio- 
lence may  seek  progress,  but  can  not  constitute 
it.  In  personal  life  the  return  home  has  been 
as  important  as  adventure  and  in  history,  as 
many  an  historian  has  appreciated,  restoration 
has  served  progress  quite  as  much  as  revolu- 
tion; provided,  of  course,  the  restoration  has 


Leadership  and  Progress 

been  something  more  than  mere  counter- 
revolution or  mere  reaction,  provided  it  has 
been  restoration  with  some  real  feeling  for  the 
new.  So  even  reactionary  movements  may  hold 
a  great  truth;  but  a  truth  which  their  supporters 
are  often  the  last  to  appreciate  and  confess. 
Frantic  returns  home  or  runs  to  cover  really  are 
sometimes  very  laughable;  serving,  as  they 
may,  the  very  progress  they  would  avoid. 


[32] 


V. 

TO  PAUSE  here  for  a  summing  up,  we 
have  found  four  important  conditions  of 
the  birth  of  new  life  among  a  people: 
(1)  the  peculiar  intimacy  of  traditional  ways 
with  life  itself,  with  life's  original  instinct  or 
urge,  as  shown  by  general  confusion,  fluency, 
inconsistency,  abnormality  and  often  startling 
exposure  or  transparency;  (2)  the  critical  or 
climactic  pressure  of  the  accumulated  meaning 
of  the  lines  of  life  with  a  consequent  demand,  as 
the  time  is  full,  that  this  meaning  may  be  read 
out;  (3)  the  obtrusive  presence  and  challenge 
of  a  new  and  strange  environment  which  de- 
mands accounting,  not  by  mere  calculation  and 
formal  reason,  but  intuitively,  and  (4)  the  hom- 
ing or  "  conservative "  instinct  sure  to  assert 
itself  and,  however  confused  and  in  its  blind- 
ness given,  as  so  often  it  is,  to  mere  reaction, 
sure  also  to  come  to  understanding  of  itself  and 
its  real  importance  and,  while  Mark  Twain  and 
the  people  generally  laugh,  to  espouse  the 

[33] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

progressive  policies  of  its  time.  These  being  the 
conditions  of  new  life  and  its  birth,  it  remains 
for  us  in  this  study  of  leadership  and  progress 
to  discover  the  place  and  importance  of  the 
individual.  The  great  individual,  I  submit, 
while  of  course  manifesting  characters  that 
must  be  present,  'however  latent,  in  all  individ- 
uals and  that,  being  at  least  latent  in  all,  make 
the  leadership  itself  possible,  is  one  who  is 
actively  superior  to  mere  consistency  and  con- 
formity as  well  as  to  the  abuse  or  ridicule  that 
such  independence  may  invite,  who  with  a 
reason  which  is  subordinated  to  insight  can 
catch  inner  and  vital  meanings,  who  without 
loss  of  the  faith  that  has  been  his  and  his  times ' 
has  the  courage  of  new  things  and  who,  able  to 
go  forward  without  betrayal  of  his  origin,  and 
always  mindful  of  his  home,  can  make  articulate 
and  familiarly  intelligible  the  needed  new  possi- 
bilities and  ideals  of  his  fellows. 

Of  such  character,  I  say,  is  the  great  individ- 
ual. Yet,  while  such  would  seem  to  portray 
the  great  individual  and  his  leadership  and 
while  we  can  see  in  him  as  so  characterized  a 
reflection  of  those  four  discovered  chief  condi- 

[34] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

tions  of  new  life,  the  person  so  described  may 
seem  more  a  fiction  than  a  fact,  more  ideal  than 
human  and  actual.  Certainly  for  an  accurate 
and  cautious  historian  such  a  person  would  be 
hard  to  find  in  the  flesh  or  rather  in  the  records. 
Only  considerable  glossing  would  make  any  one 
of  any  time  able  to  pass  the  test.  Not  that 
history  does  not  report  leaders  to  us,  but  there 
is  a  difference  between  accurate  history  and  a 
would-be  appreciative  history  that  often  takes 
the  will  for  the  deed  or  fact.  Moreover,  as  an 
interesting  though  hardly  conclusive  question, 
at  any  time  has  any  individual  in  the  opinion 
of  his  contemporaries  generally  quite  met  or 
even  notably  approximated  our  definition? 
Perhaps  leadership  is  after  all  only  an  ideal,  a 
noble  fiction.  Perhaps  leadership  never  is  real 
or  accomplished  contemporaneously  but  is 
rather  a  sort  of  after-thought  or  after- 
discovery,  a  great  leader  being  rather  the  selec- 
tion, almost  the  creation,  of  later  times  than  the 
recognized  or  demonstrated  prophet  and  hero 
of  his  own.  Great  leaders,  it  may  then  be,  in 
some  sense  never  really  are,  but  are  either 
leaders  that  are  sometime  to  come  to  deliver 

[35] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

their  people  or  that  once  upon  a  time  walked 
among  men.  Such  leaders,  of  course,  only  an 
appreciative,  generous  history  could  discover. 
If  a  leader  has  to  be  in  any  sense  "  ahead  of 
his  times"  and,  also  more  than  others,  in  any 
sense  loyal  to  the  past,  how  can  the  accurate 
historians  be  any  more  successful  in  finding 
him  than  his  own  contemporaries'? 

I  suspect  that  great  individual  leadership, 
like  a  common,  general  individualism,  truly  is 
a  good  deal  of  an  abstraction,  being  more  think- 
able than  findable;  in  other  words,  having  a 
wider  reach  and  deeper  root  than  the  merely 
findable  things  of  space  and  time.  Political 
philosophers  have  often  compromised  their  own 
best  ideas  and  purposes  by  failure  to  appreciate 
this.  Rousseau's  universal  individualism,  his 
absolute  democracy,  for  example,  was  really 
only  a  great  dream  to  be  interpreted,  not  some- 
thing to  be  taken  literally  as  report  either  of  an 
actual  past,  an  early  Golden  Age,  or  of  a  future 
social  and  political  Heaven.  In  actual,  con- 
temporary life  real  leadership  can  not  be  wholly 
identified  with  any  discoverable  person  nor  is 
there  ever,  was  there  ever  or  will  there  ever  be 

[36] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

a  condition  of  general  unmixed  individualism, 
pure  and  simple  and  unqualified,  with  its  so  oft 
proclaimed  liberty  and  fraternity  and  equality 
for  all  and  its  bondage  and  service  for  none. 
But  the  unfindable  is  not  necessarily  unreal. 
"Objective"  history  is  not  the  only  true  history. 
From  the  abstractions  of  political  philoso- 
phers to  pass  to  so  concrete  a  thing  as  the  famil- 
iar, almost  too  familiar,  party  conventions,  will 
seem  a  bit  sudden  and  not  without  some  shock; 
but  of  life,  as  in  this  matter  of  individuals  it 
is  actually  found  or  findable,  we  have  in  the 
convention  an  excellent  although  perhaps  al- 
most too  sharply  focussed  illustration.  Thus, 
to  begin  with,  it  really  takes  at  least  two  con- 
ventions, either  being  for  the  other  in 
near  prospect  or  near  memory,  to  make 
one.  Naturally  each  always  has  the  country 
in  some  measure,  but  it  has  the  other  in  special 
measure  in  mind.  Secondly,  at  either,  there  is 
a  mobile,  more  or  less  kaleidoscopic  confusion 
of  factions  and  persons  as  well  as  of  policies  con- 
servative and  progressive.  The  recognized 
leaders,  however  proclaimed  and  however  as- 
sertively independent  or  however  patriotic  for 

[37] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

the  old  or  the  new,  are  always  pretty  much  in 
the  hands  of  their  numbered  —  if  only  the  num- 
ber may  become  a  majority! — and  organized 
friends.  Except  for  all  sorts  of  generally  hid- 
den minor  groups  and  personal  rivalries  and 
petty  leaderships,  at  least  ninety-five  per  cent  of 
all  present  are,  taken  in  the  large,  docile  sheep 
rather  than  bell-wethers.  No  one,  it  is  true, 
can  be  set  down  as  wholly  and  absolutely  either. 
So  in  actual  and  practical  life  are  the  two  forces, 
the  social  and  the  personal,  organization  and 
individuality,  closely  interlocked.  But,  thirdly, 
here  being  where  the  country  has  some  chance, 
there  are  always  as  undercurrent,  felt  and  in 
some  measure  necessarily  responded  to,  in  the 
consciousness  of  all,  in  the  sensitive  life  of  both 
conventions,  the  general  life  and  interest  and 
need  of  the  time.  Sometimes,  too,  the  ideas  and 
character  and  purpose  of  some  insistent  and 
unforgetable  individual,  perhaps  supported, 
perhaps  opposed,  which  making  very  little  dif- 
ference, may  constitute  a  real  power  behind  all 
the  manipulation  and  machinery,  all  the  deliber- 
ation and  partisanship.  Then,  as  for  the  out- 
come, I  need  say  no  more  than  that  the  chances 

[38] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

seem  to  be  quite  against  the  first  choice  of  any 
considerable  faction  in  either  convention  being 
selected.  Whichever  party  wins,  too,  in  the  final 
general  election,  the  subsequent  events  are 
likely  to  show  the  outward  victory  superficial, 
heed  being  finally  given  to  the  real  life  and  wish 
of  the  country. 

Fortunately  any  party  is  more  responsible, 
less  in  mere  opposition,  when  in  power  than  at 
the  convention,  although  quite  humanly  and 
humorously  it  will  get  at  such  a  result,  when 
possible,  through  indirection  and  disguise,  by 
a  back-door  rather  than  at  the  front.  In 
England,  for  example,  the  victorious  conserva- 
tives have  had  a  way,  almost  a  habit,  by  all 
sorts  of  sinuous  routes,  although  sometimes  also 
boldly  and  openly,  of  appropriating  the  pur- 
poses and  policies  of  those  whom  they  have 
opposed;  while  the  liberals,  come  into  power, 
have  always  lost  some  of  their  liberalism,  and 
what  has  been  thus  true  in  England  well  illus- 
trates so-called  practical  politics  the  world  over. 
Whether  pessimist  or  optimist  can  get  most 
satisfaction  out  of  that  fact  I  shall  not  try  to 
say.  Enough  that,  whatever  the  machinery,  the 

[39] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

deeper  forces  of  life  do  seem  to  prevail  and  that 
there  appears  to  be  ample  justification  for  the 
common  and  often  great  difference  between  his- 
tory's later  appreciation  of  events  and  forces 
and  men  of  any  time  and  the  contemporary 
party-ridden  judgements  and  accounts.  Also, 
in  the  whole  story  we  can  see  how  abstract  and 
intangible  is  great  leadership  or  individualism 
in  general.  Social  organization  and  personal 
individuality  never  do  exist  apart.  Outwardly 
at  any  time  there  are  always  many  independent 
leaders,  so-called  with  varying  fractions  of 
truth,  and  among  them  there  may  be  preparing 
for  the  posthumous  recognition  of  generous  his- 
tory a  real  and  great  leadership.  Outwardly, 
again,  there  are  always  parties  and  factions, 
even  great  races  and  powerful  nations,  with 
their  constraints  and  uniformities  and  their 
sheep-like  personnels  and,  while  more  or  less 
pressing  in  the  personality  of  every  sheep 
among  them  there  will  be  some  active  in- 
dividuality, in  a  small  fraction  or  a  large  con- 
tributing its  influence  for  a  different  life,  there 
will  always  be  the  sheep  and  the  sheep-folds, 
as  well  as  all  the  articulate  ways  of  life  which 

[40] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

these  imply  and  without  which,  supplying  as 
they  do  the  necessary  lines,  the  mediums,  the 
methods  and  the  language,  of  association  and 
communication  and  exchange,  leadership  itself 
would  not  be  possible. 

The  political  convention,  then,  illustrates 
very  well  the  tangle  of  person  and  faction,  of 
new  life  and  formal  organization,  which  is 
natural  to  all  human  association.  It  shows 
forces  of  progress  active,  yet  often  suppressed 
or  hidden,  and  it  shows  personal  leadership. 
The  real  and  great  leader,  however,  may  even 
be,  of  all  those  present  or  involved,  the  least 
noticed  at  the  time,  having  little,  if  any,  open 
endorsement. 

In  any  selection  of  leaders,  as  in  other  mat- 
ters, I  may  be  reminded  here  that  it  is  the  vot- 
ing majority  of  the  people  that  decides  or  rules. 
This  is  true  or  rather,  like  most  things  involving 
human  affairs,  only  in  some  part  true.  It  is  not 
the  whole  truth.  At  least  there  is  a  certain  in- 
congruity between  an  electoral  majority  rule 
and  real  leadership.  Eeal  leadership,  in  the 
first  place,  as  we  should  keep  in  mind,  is  not 
naturally  a  matter  of  outward,  formal  and 


Leadership  and  Progress 

merely  contemporary  selection;  and,  in  the  sec- 
ond place,  only  suggesting  perhaps  both  the 
peculiar  utility  and  the  limitation  of  an  elector- 
al democracy,  formal  majorities  by  the  nature 
of  the  case,  by  dint  of  the  manner  of  their 
mobilization,  tend  either  to  reaction  or  to  revo- 
lution. In  both  reaction  and  revolution  they 
have  positive  value;  but  they  do  not  in  them- 
selves directly  promote  or  foster  constructive 
progress.  Progress  needs  both  such  democracy 
and  aristocracy,  mass-play  and  real  leadership. 
History  probably  would  show  the  forces  of  the 
two,  of  communally  associated  action  and  of 
aristocracy,  including  even  personal  loneliness, 
nearly  if  not  quite  equal  in  their  importance. 


VI. 

VERY  little  has  been  said  so  far,  except  by 
implication,  when  the  great  leader  was 
defined  in  that  fourfold  characterization, 
of  the  individual  in  general,  of  the  size  and 
character  of  the  human  person.  May  I  under- 
take measurement  and  appraisal  now!  How 
small  any  one  of  us  is,  counting  only  as  one  in 
millions,  living  a  moment  or  two  in  eternity; 
how  petty,  too,  and  ignorant  and  prone  to  be 
selfish  and  mean.  But  also  how  great  is  any 
one,  always  the  possible  leader  of  one's  group 
and  possible  member  of  any  group,  there  being 
no  groups  that  are  inviolable.  Nothing,  in 
short,  can  be  smaller  or  meaner,  nothing  greater 
or  nobler,  than  a  human  person.  Perhaps  the 
very  possibility  of  smallness  and  mere  selfish- 
ness is  what  gives  significance  to  the  greatness 
and  the  nobility,  when  these  are  realized. 
Josiah  Eoyce,  I  remember,  in  the  very  possibil- 
ity of  evil  found  conviction  of  God.  Lacking 
the  courage  to  fail,  as  so  often  said,  no  one  can 

[43] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

ever  accomplish  anything  deeply  worth  while. 
But  suffice  it  now  that,  midst  all  his  danger  of 
smallness,  the  person  can  be  great.  On  just 
what  is  this  possibility  based? 

Many  have  thought  of  individuals  as  only 
the  diminutive  parts  of  the  massive,  over- 
whelming whole,  or,  again,  as  atoms  indepen- 
dent and  unrelated,  each  quite  shut  up  within 
its  separate  and  more  component  than  com- 
posed self,  and  if  at  all  social,  social  only  for 
selfish  reasons  or  under  external  compulsion 
from  either  earth  or  Heaven.  There  has  been, 
too,  much  popular  acceptance  of  individualism 
as  naturally  even  anti-social,  aggressively  op- 
posed to  cooperative  living  of  any  kind.  But 
the  atom,  we  are  learning,  is  really  in  itself, 
however  diminutive,  big  with  the  character  and 
the  forces  of  the  whole  solar  system  and  the 
human  individual,  however  small,  if  really  alive, 
holds  in  himself  all  the  elements  and  interests 
and  agencies  that  belong  to  the  whole  fabric  of 
society.  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to  tell  any  of  my 
readers  how  great  he  is  —  at  least  theoretically, 
in  native  possibility!  Perhaps,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  fortunate  that  the  cosmic  genius  in 

[44] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

any  one  of  us  is  sometimes  a  bit  hampered  by 
the  formalities  of  civilization!  But,  at  least 
latent,  in  every  individual  there  is  the  cosmic 
unity. 

It  is  surely  the  very  genius  of  individuality 
to  be  social  and  not  just  conventionally  so.  The 
genuinely  social  factors  of  individuality  may 
be  variously  indicated  and  will  doubtless  seem 
significant  in  varying  degrees.  Thus,  very  im- 
portant indeed,  although  not  likely  at  once  to 
be  generally  appreciated,  is  the  fundamental 
fact  that  every  act  of  an  individual,  which 
shows  him,  as  it  were,  breaking  away  from  his 
conventional  and  uniformed  associates,  is  an 
act  of  some  special  adaptation  and  all  such 
adaptations  are,  not  indeed  conventionally,  but 
essentially  social,  while  many  of  them  may  be 
ideally  and  progressively  so.  Some  one  has 
said  that  adaptiveness  beyond  mere  convention 
is  the  very  essence  of  real  culture.  Of  course, 
to  recall  what  was  said  of  the  possibility  of 
doing  wrong,  of  failing,  the  individual  always 
may  live  specially  and  unconventionally  by  one 
of  two  ways,  one  known  as  the  selfish  way,  by 
which  he  becomes,  or  tends  to  degenerate  into, 

[45] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

a  mere  sordid  creature  of  physical,  sensuous 
nature,  the  other  the  nobly  personal  way,  cer- 
tainly not  less  individualistic,  by  which  he 
moves  forward  into  greater  breadth  and  depth 
of  life;  but  it  is  worth  observing  that  by  either 
route  the  individual  comes  into  the  life  of  the 
whole;  becoming  by  the  former,  the  way  of  mere 
uncontrolled  instinct,  a  helpless  creature  of 
nature;  by  the  latter,  the  way  of  conscious  and 
well-purposed  will,  what  in  the  language  of 
religion  would  be  called  a  participant  in  the 
creative  life  of  God.  There  is  simply  no  such 
thing  as  an  individual,  however  unconventional, 
be  he  instinct-impelled  or  will-guided,  who  can 
live,  as  an  atom,  to  himself  alone.  The  very 
genius  of  individuality  is  wholeness,  degenerate 
or  progressive. 

Besides  the  essentially  social,  however  un- 
conventional, character  of  the  special  adapta- 
tions of  the  individual,  there  is  to  be  remarked 
for  our  present  purpose  the  very  different  qual- 
ity of  the  life  of  the  individual  as  an  individual 
from  that  of  the  group.  Breadth  and  narrow- 
ness, vitality  and  artificiality,  facility  or  versa- 

[46] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

tility  and  rigidity,  hospitality  and  exclusive- 
ness,  humanity  and  institutionalism  are  some 
of  the  contrasts.  "Personally  I  would  do  any- 
thing, but,  as  you  know,  business  is  business" 
or  "I  am  an  officer  of  administration  and  gov- 
ernment." Personally  and  humanly  soldiers 
exchange  real  courtesies  across  battle-lines ;  but 
as  soldiers  their  exchanges  are  quite  different. 
Was  it  not  Eousseau  who  said,  once  more  with 
a  philosopher's  violence  of  abstraction,  that  if 
there  were  only  persons  in  the  world,  only  free, 
unorganized  individuals,  there  would  be  no 
battle-lines  of  any  kind?  Parties,  factions, 
nations  fight,  not  persons;  not  free,  fraternal 
and  equal  persons. 

Again,  it  quite  belongs  to  the  size  and  charac- 
ter of  individuality  that  it  puts  emphasis  on 
feeling  rather  than  on  reason;  if  selfish,  on  the 
feelings  of  sense,  if  nobly  personal,  on  those 
of  insight,  of  faith  and  the  spirit.  Reason  and 
its  formulae  belong  primarily  to  the  group  and 
the  institution;  it  is  the  faculty  of  law  and 
order;  but,  taken  abstractly,  the  individual,  for 
good  or  for  ill,  is,  not  properly  illegal  or 

[47] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

disorderly,  but  super-legal,  the  law  being  for 
him,  not  he  just  for  it.  The  individual,  too,  may 
dream.    He  is  naturally  loyal  to  general  prin- 
ciples, to  the  great  free  spirits  of  things  rather 
than  to  any  literal  and  formal  pronouncements 
about  them.    He  welcomes  adventure,  pursuing 
the  impossible  or  rather  — T  a  much  better  word 
—  the  incommensurable.    For  his  goal  and  the 
great  adventure  of  it  he  has  often  been  willing 
to  die.    He  is,  you  see,  in  that  case  by  nature  a 
visionary,  an  adventurer,  an  impractical  doc- 
trinaire.   Indeed  I  am  quite  sure  there  can  be 
no  real,  genuine  individuality  without  some  of 
the  inspiration  of  the  impractical.    In  history 
the  impractical  adventurers,  the  great  doctrin- 
aires,  although  never  formally  chosen,  have 
come  to  command  their  millions,  while  the  prac- 
tical men  have  served  rather  than  commanded 
only  thousands.    The  doctrinaires  have  inaug- 
urated new  epochs;  the  others,  so  much  more 
"practical,"  have  merely  maintained  old  ones. 
So  few  of  us  realize  the  profound  appeal  of  gen- 
eral ideas,  of  so  called  abstract  generalities. 
Yet  at  critical  times  they  always  get  wide  vogue 

[48] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

and  they  have  great  power.  Love,  Justice, 
Liberty,  Humanity,  Equality  may  sound  dull, 
but  theirs  is  a  significant  dullness.  They  are  the 
life,  too,  of  the  individual,  making  him  big  and 
active  with  the  whole  of  life,  and  they  may  give 
him  all  men  as  his  followers. 

Space  quite  forbids  that  I  should  go  on  as  1 
would.  Still,  may  I  add,  before  concluding, 
that  in  genuine  individuality,  belonging  to  its 
size  and  character,  to  its  expansiveness,  must 
always  be  three  especially  human  gifts  of  truth ; 
memory,  imagination  and  humor.  Memory  only 
names  once  more  what  before  I  called  the 
homing-instinct  so  important  to  effective  pro- 
gress. Without  imagination  the  individual 
must  simply  betray  his  own  birthright  of  free- 
dom and  adventure,  of  open-mindedness  and,  if 
I  may  use  the  word,  open-willedness.  But 
humor  is  a  peculiarly  human  and  personal  gift 
of  truth  especially  when  one  can  laugh  at  one- 
self as  well  as  at  others  and  perhaps  above  all 
when  one  can  bear  that  others  should  laugh  at 
one  also.  These  three  gifts  of  truth,  I  say,  are 
special  virtues  of  the  person  and  marks  of  his 

[49] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

'size  and  peculiar  genius,  enabling  him  to  be  the 
reader  of  inner  meanings  and  namer  of  new 
things  which  a  progressive  leader  must  always 
be. 

In  conclusion,  if  you  have  understood  my 
measurement  and  appraisal  of  personal  individ- 
uality, you  will  see  how  in  all  individuality  lives 
something  that  is  quite  superior  to  the  distinc- 
tions of  place  or  time,  of  class  or  institution. 
Even  races  and  whole  eras  are  smaller  than  the 
individual.  They  divide  life;  he  is  a  unity  of 
it.  They  confine  it,  he  frees  it  and  makes  it 
grow.  And  in  time  of  crises,  with  the  gestation 
that  we  have  seen,  as  the  preparing  new  life 
appears,  some  individual,  leading  the  rest,  is 
sure  to  be  able  to  interpret  or  —  should  we 
rather  say? — after  his  death  is  found  to  have 
interpreted  that  life  to  itself.  Eeal  leadership 
does  have  to  wait  on  time.  In  its  own  day,  just 
because  it  is  leadership,  real  and  progressive, 
courageous  and  adventurous,  impractical  and 
insistent,  it  has  to  be  in  question  and  obscured, 
often  denied  and  abused.  The  greater  leader- 
ship be  in  its  day,  the  more  it  will  be  made  clear 

[50] 


The  Nature  of  Progressive  Leadership 

or  proved  outwardly,  as  in  so  many  historic 
cases,  afterwards.  No  real  leader  is  ever  with- 
out honor  save  in  his  own  time.  Even  an  ordi- 
nary person,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  possesses  enough 
individuality  in  size  and  quality  to  make  his 
success  in  some  measure  depend  on  the  future. 
To  live  and  succeed  only  for  the  day  is  hardly 
to  live  at  all.  In  such  living  is  no  effective 
personality. 

Would  you  have  an  illustration  of  great 
leadership!  I  take  as  recent  a  case  as  is  safe. 
How  great  was  Lincoln;  how  far-seeing;  how 
above  the  mere  law;  how  open  in  mind  and  will; 
how  human;  how  gifted  with  humor,  imagina- 
tion and  sense  of  home;  and  how  insistent. 
Abused  for  his  insistence;  having  enemies  north 
as  well  as  south,  at  home  as  well  as  abroad,  he 
not  so  much  was  for  his  time  as  became  for  all 
time  a  great  leader.  Now  not  this  country,  but 
also  England  and  not  the  North  but  also  the 
South  celebrate  him. 

His  leadership,  seeing  deeply,  progressive, 
assertive  but,  in  spite  of  attacks  and  charges, 
not  autocratic,  was  real  and  is  now  proved. 


Leadership  and  Progress 

Writes  of  him,  or  of  all  leadership,  a  great 
English  poet  and  playwright: 

"When  the  high  heart  we  magnify, 
And  the  sure  vision  celebrate, 

And  worship  greatness,  passing  by, 
Ourselves  are  great." 


[52] 


II.    RECENT  OPPORTUNITIES  OF 
PROGRESSIVE  LEADERSHIP 


IN  THE  foregoing  essay,  although  a  demand 
for  progressive  leadership  in  actual  condi- 
tions of  the  time  has  been  dwelt  upon  at 
some  length  and  although  some  illustrative  use 
of  recent  affairs  and  events  has  been  made, 
primarily  and  with  distinct  purpose  an  abstract 
interest  has  been  maintained.  Thus  the  attempt 
has  been  only  to  show  what  quite  in  general 
progressive  leadership  is;  how,  typically,  great 
leaders  are  i '  born,  not  made, '  *  not  just  formally 
made  or  chosen;  and,  especially,  just  what  de- 
pendence any  important  leadership  must  have 
on  the  actual  social  and  political  machinery  of 
its  time,  on  the  formal  and  quite  articulate  ways 
and  traditions,  on  the  visible  institutions.  But 
in  this  second  essay  the  object  is  directly  and 
practically  to  consider  certain  actual  opportun- 
ities of  progressive  leadership  in  the  familiar 

[53] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

affairs  of  recent  times.  Not  merely  have  these 
affairs  created  a  demand  for  leadership;  also, 
quite  positively  and  very  presently,  they  have 
been  alive  and  active  with  the  possibility  of 
it.  Indeed  who  really  lives  today  must  have 
felt  its  presence ;  even  at  turning  of  any  corner, 
if  I  may  speak  with  so  much  realism,  must  have 
expected  to  confront  the  leader  himself. 

Here,  then,  I  would  be  more  than  the  abstract 
inquirer.  I  would  actually  enter  the  world  of 
affairs.  But,  doing  this,  I  propose  to  be  cau- 
tious, lest  I  be  reminded  of  those  angels  as  to 
entrances  said  to  be  more  hesitant  than  some. 
I  propose  to  be,  so  far  as  may  be,  only  largely 
and  generally  worldly  wise  and  practical. 

To  begin  with,  as  a  sign  of  my  discretion,  it 
is  not  my  expectation  that  any  one  person  can 
now  be  found  or  even  necessarily  ever  will  be 
found  to  cover  the  whole  field  of  the  present 
opportunity  of  leadership.  My  hero-worship, 
actual  or  hypothetical,  goes  not  so  far  as  that. 
Some  individual,  it  is  true,  may  appear  now  or 
later  as  of  special  importance  for  serving  some 
predominant  interest  or  even  for  serving  iix 

[54] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

some  measure  several  such  interests;  but  in 
general  for  our  own  time,  as  for  any  time, 
leadership  simply  can  be  no  one  person's  com- 
plete monopoly;  in  principle  it  must  be  a  divi- 
ded labor.  Eeal  progress  comes  not  without 
personal  leadership;  but,  while  some  may  be 
more  conspicuous  than  others,  one  often  with 
respect  to  some  special  and  absorbing  interest 
more  conspicuous  than  any  other,  there  will  be 
a  number  of  leaders. 

Furthermore,  I  have  no  thought  here  of  call- 
ing by  name  one  or  even,  as  might  be  fairly 
safe,  several  of  the  possible  leaders  of  the  time. 
Nominations  might  be  only  disturbing,  quite 
defeating  the  present  purpose  by  reviving  all 
sorts  of  confusing  controversy.  Too  much  diff- 
erence of  opinion  still  exists.  The  day's  leaders, 
or  great  leader,  may  be  said  to  be  still  in  the 
making.  Contemporary  judgements  of  men  are 
always  too  personal,  too  much  under  a  spell  of 
one  kind  or  another,  to  be  at  all  conclusive  and 
today,  among  other  things  mentioned  in  the 
previous  essay,  a  ouija  board  mentality  may 
still  be  affecting  many  of  us  in  our  estimates 

[55] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

of  persons  as  well  as  in  our  estimates  of  other 
things.* 

Contemporary  judgements  of  persons,  I  say, 
are  not  reliable.  Probable  they  are  the  least 
reliable  of  all  human  judgements,  very  much  as 
personal  dialogue,  whatever  its  zest  and  drama- 
tic interest,  has  its  serious  limitations  as  a  way 
to  clear,  sane,  objective  and  scientific  thinking. 
Did  not  the  prosy,  impersonal  Aristotle  think 
more  clearly  than  Plato,  writer  of  historical  dia- 
logues, and  Plato  himself  than  Socrates,  whose 
dialogues  were  so  many  actual  personal  en- 
counters ?  The  very  importance  of  persons  and 
personality  is  actually  blinding,  especially  when 
to  the  personality,  assertive  and  competitive, 
there  must  be  added  all  the  extravagance  and 
bias  and  partisan  animus  of  tensely  critical 
times. 

Progressive  leadership,  then,  is  no  complete 
monopoly  for  any  one  and  also  here  not  even 
several  nominations  are  to  be  made.  At  least 
so  far  as  this  essay  goes  all  candidates  for 


*  In  possible  conviction  of  myself,  for  an  amusing  example,  not 
very  long  ago  there  came  to  my  unthinking,  doubtless  a  bit  biased, 
automatic  consciousness,  very  much  as  in  a  dream,  the  strange  title,  if 
title  it  was,  of  what  would  certainly  be  a  curious,  however  un- 
trustworthy, volume:  "Hated  Men  in  History:  Much,  More,  Most: 
Washington,  Lincoln,  Wilson,  Henry  Cabot  Lodge." 

[56] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

recognition  must  wait  on  time  and  its  fairer 
decisions.  Attention  here  is  to  be,  not  on  per- 
sons, but  on  opportunities,  on  certain  large  con- 
temporary conditions  and  affairs  which  for  some 
time  have  been  constituting  a  distinct  challenge, 
intellectual  and  moral,  to  creative  and  so  pro- 
gressive achievement. 


[57] 


II. 

THE  first  of  the  challenging  conditions,  to 
which  I  would  call  attention,  is  very 
fundamental,  being  the  peculiar  general 
mentality  of  recent  times;  very  conspicuous 
several  years  ago  and  still  in  distinct  evidence; 
abnormal,  as  at  large  the  times  have  been  ab- 
normal; and,  like  so  much  if  not  all  abnormality, 
having  in  it  possibilities  most  adventurously 
poised  between  opportunity  and  danger,  good 
and  evil,  progress  and  reversion  or  even  positive 
degeneracy.  In  them  is  most  serious  menace; 
but  also  real  hope. 

And  what  has  been  the  mentality  of  the 
time?  It  has  certainly  included  the  ouija 
board  and — with  double  meaning  —  the  spirit 
thereof.  But,  to  speak  more  comprehensively 
and  to  explain  a  state  of  mind  by  reference  to 
certain  conditions  of  the  time,  there  has  been 
on  the  one  hand  throughout  our  life  sharp  re- 
action, boastfully  practical,  too  consciously 
normal,  insistently  conservative.  On  the  other, 

[58] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

as  possible  balance  or  counterpart,  there  has 
been  impractical  vision  of  new  life.  Almost  at 
times  have  we  been  asked  to  forget  the  past  and 
its  history  altogether  and  to  attend  in  thought, 
however  abstract,  and  act,  however  violent,  to 
a  future  as  sudden  as  '  '  new. ' '  The  reaction  and 
this  vision,  furthermore,  really  only  two  factors 
of  a  single  situation,  have  each  brought  its  own 
special  abnormality  and  so  have  been  signs,  the 
former  quite  as  emphatically  as  the  latter,  that 
the  old  and  normal  order  is  passing.  Thus  the 
former  has  been  very  generally  attended  with 
reversionary  or  decadent  releases  of  emotion 
and  idea,  its  very  insistent  conservatism  and 
suppression  seeming  to  breed  such  lawlessness 
and  primitive  violence  of  mind  and  will;  while 
the  latter,  possessed  of  an  unnatural,  over- 
reaching optimism  and  idealism,  has  invited 
unreal  vision  and  impractical  revolution. 

The  reactionary  movements  have  brought,  not 
only  specifically  the  conspicuous  increase  in 
Spiritualism,  but  also  generally  a  very  wide- 
spread spiritualistic  habit  of  mind  as  a  way  of 
meeting  changes.  Such  movements  by  their 
very  assertion,  often  distressed  and  frantic,  of 

[59] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

the  old  order  and  their  consequent  artificial  sup- 
pression of  actual  new  life  must,  I  submit,  al- 
ways be  attended  with  outbreaks  of  the  sub- 
conscious which  lack  control  or  sanity  and 
which  can  amount  only  to  *  '  automatic ' '  and 
unreasoned  judgements  about  anything  or  any- 
body at  all  at  variance  with  things  as  they  have 
been.  Has  distinct  novelty  or  difference  come? 
Is  there  loss,  real  or  threatened?  Things  and 
people  as  they  were  are  no  more?  Then,  by 
way  of  response  to  the  strangeness,  as  if  to  some 
mysterious  disturbance,  the  startled  reaction- 
aries refer  what  is  really  only  released  from 
within  themselves  to  the  new  thing  that  has 
obtruded.  A  bereaved,  deeply  moved  mother 
may  thus  get  a  message  —  out  of  her  own  sub- 
consciousness  —  from  her  son  killed  across  the 
seas.  Some  loyal  and  earnest  patriot,  facing 
certain  changes  in  the  life  of  his  country,  which 
involve  of  course  both  painful  losses  and  shock- 
ing novelties,  may  desperately  and  passionately 
quote  to  the  letter  the  remembered  sayings  of 
some  long  dead  father  of  his  country  and  in 
these  think  to  have  sound  and  sacred  wisdom 
for,  and  actual  contact  with,  the  new  conditions. 

[60] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

The  reactionaries,  too,  who  so  very  earnestly 
quote  to  the  letter  the  past  wisdom  of  the  long 
dead,  the  subconscious  ideas  of  the  time,  are 
also  given  to  being  primitive  and  loose  in  their 
passions,  impulses  and  emotions  as  well  as  ir- 
responsible, or  unadapted,  in  their  ideas  and 
judgements.  So  does  conservatism,  meeting 
certain  changes,  seek  suppression,  but  bring 
release,  albeit  in  an  indirect  and  unwholesome 
way;  taking  ' ' communications "  from  the  past, 
even  the  idle  chattering  of  departed  spirits,  as 
wisdom  for  the  present  and  at  the  same  time 
abundantly  exposing  reversionary  desires  and 
ideas. 

Do  not,  deliberately  or  thoughtlessly,  mis- 
understand me.  Surely  I  have,  as  all  must 
have,  warm  appreciation  and  respect  for  such 
earnest  patriots  and  honest  politicians  as  have 
been  quoting  the  great  George  Washington  or 
the  wise  James  Monroe,  just  as  also  with  count- 
less others  I  have  more  than  mere  appreciation, 
a  gentle  affection,  for  the  bereaved  parents  who 
hoarding  a  cherished  past  have  met  their  grief 
with  communications  from  their  dead  sons;  but 
parental  love  or  patriotic  loyalty  may  often  be 

[61] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

genuine  and  admirable  without  being  wise  or 
rational  in  interpreting  changes  that  must  be 
met.  Bather  may  those  deeply  devoted  to  their 
children  or  to  their  country  and  suffering  from 
their  losses  easily  misinterpret  the  new  things. 
Of  those  who  recognize  the  unguarded  credulity 
that  so  often  affects  people  in  critical  times  and 
consciously  play  upon  it  for  their  own  gain, 
personal  or  partisan,  nothing  needs  to  be  said 
except  of  course  that  they  add  greatly  to  the 
trouble  and  danger  of  it  all. 

Furthermore,  there  is  something  in  spiritual- 
ism; not  indeed  the  spiritualism,  but  something. 
"Something  in  it"  is  of  course  an  honest,  and 
easy  as  honest,  way  of  meeting  anything:  but 
it  is  safe  and  fair.  Spiritualism  and  in  general 
the  spiritualistic  habit  of  mind  can  be  only 
parodies,  or  distortions,  of  something  in  life 
that  is  real  and  vital.  Protesting  against  them, 
branding  them  as  abnormal  is  very  far  from 
denial  of  meaning  for  the  word  spirit  or  spiritual. 
Change  and  loss  may  always  induce  them; 
but  they  do  not  exhaust  the  meaning,  they  can 
only  very  superficially  and  artificially  represent 

[62] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

the  meaning  of  the  mystery  that  change  and 
loss  must  always  imply  and  impress. 

In  these  times,  then,  of  new  things  and  of  the 
very  conservative  reaction  against  them  the 
people's  mentality  has  often  been  ' ' spirit^- 
istic"  and,  as  was  suggested,  the  unscrupulous 
and  selfish  or  partisan  have  even  exploited  this 
condition  of  mind,  so  greatly  strengthening  what 
hardly  lacked  momentum  of  its  own.  In  short, 
spiritualism  with  all  its  accomplishments  well 
meant  or  ill,  has  been  a  much  more  general  state 
of  life  and  mind  than  the  religious  or  quasi- 
religious  cult  of  Doyle  and  Lodge*  and  others 
who  have  been  hearing  from  departed  relatives 
or  from  William  James  or  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  As 
here  and  now  considered  it  comprises  a  very  com- 
mon attitude  evident  in  the  newspapers  and 
journals  very  widely,  in  the  deliberations  of 
political  bodies,  not  excepting  the  House  or 
even  the  Senate  or  any  political  party,  in  pri- 
vate conversations,  and  indeed  wherever  life 
and  its  affairs  are  matters  of  discussion  and 
judgement.,  A  genuine  and  too  assertive  con- 
servatism, so  conservative  as  to  release  passion 

*  Of  course  Sir  Oliver. 

[63] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

and  violence  of  mind  and  will,  seems  to  have 
had  no  choice  but  to  revive  the  past  at  once  too 
affectionately  and  too  well;  too  literally;  too 
primitively. 

But,  as  was  said,  reaction  with  the  abnormal 
mentality  it  brings  is  not  all.  Widespread  as 
this  has  been,  it  is  only  one  half,  if  one  may  ven- 
ture to  speak  so  accurately.  With  it,  as  if  to 
conteract  or  to  complement  —  which  to  say  is 
fairly  in  doubt  —  there  is  the  vision  of  new  life 
that  was  mentioned  above  and  that  sees  the 
future  so  clearly  that  it  induces  not  so  much  a 
groping  as  a  grasping  forward  and  a  state  of 
mind  abnormal  for  being  so  much  more  vision- 
ary than  intelligent.  A  reactionary  conserva- 
tism without  such  an  accompanying  idealism, 
impractical  even  to  violence,  during  any  period 
of  transition  would  be  unnatural  as  it  is  un- 
thinkable. Certainly,  apart  from  the  general 
truth,  our  own  time  specifically  has  shown  how 
inseparable  the  two,  the  conservatism  and  the 
idealism,  are.  Sharp  reactionaries  and  ultra- 
progressives  have  been  in  evidence;  and  the 
latter  have  been  making  their  own  contribution 
to  the  extravagant  and  abnormal  mentality  of 

[64] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

the  time  as  well  as  to  the  adventure  of  mixed 
danger  and  opportunity  which  abnormality  in- 
variably offers. 

As  to  which  of  the  two  groups  departs  farther 
from  what  is  traditional  and  normal  this  is  very 
difficult  to  say.  Philosophically,  if  not  mathe- 
matically, their  distances  are  probably  about 
equal.  In  different  ways  they  both  unsettle 
and  offend  the  normal  and  so,  marvellous  to 
relate,  actually  work  together,  partners  in  fact 
if  not  in  intent,  to  effect  distinct  change.  If  the 
reactionaries,  as  has  been  shown,  revive  the 
past,  releasing  the  vital  and  primitive  even 
while  holily  and  mysteriously  they  parrot  dead 
and  suppressive  formulae,  the  radical  progres- 
sives achieve  the  future  too  recklessly,  in  their 
haste  slavishly  and  blindly  adopting  methods 
and  violently  confiscating  accumulated  re- 
sources of  all  sorts  from  the  very  life  they 
would  wholly  reform  or  supplant.  How  often 
has  a  revolution  proved  only  a  repetition,  except 
for  the  inexperience  and  inefficiency  and 
changes  in  personnel,  of  what  it  has  overthrown 
and  then,  mixing  humor  with  tragedy,  has 

[65] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

invited     because     so     thoroughly     justifying 
counter-revolution. 

All  of  which  is  to  say,  now  putting  in  a 
simple  sum  the  foregoing  analysis  of  abnormal 
and  transitional  times  and  regarding  alike  the 
conditions  of  overt  life  and  the  attending  states 
of  mind,  that  the  two  movements,  reaction  and 
visionary  revolution,  as  naturally  contemporary 
as  abnormal,  both  contain,  in  their  accepted 
and  appropriate  constitution,  factors  of  law 
and  order  and  factors  of  lawlessness,  of  the  tra- 
ditional status  quo  and  of  actual  change  or 
growth.  They  are  virtual  partners,  then,  in 
that  they  are  both  occupied  with  conserving 
the  past  and  with  effecting  change  or  doing 
violence.  The  difference  or  rivalry  between 
them  springs,  as  the  actual  life  discloses,  not 
from  factors  out  of  which  they  compose  life, 
these  proving  to  be  the  same,  but  from  their 
sharp  disagreement  as  to  which  factor,  law  or 
lawlessness,  is  put  forward  as  end  and  which  is 
employed  merely  as  means.  Moreover  it  must 
be  just  such  disagreement,  distinguishing  be- 
tween two  common  and  essential  factors  of  life 
on  the  end-and-means  basis,  that  makes  either 

[66] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

reaction  with  its  use  of  violence  in  support  of 
law  or  revolution  with  its  use  of  law  and  the 
formal  organization  in  acts  of  violence  in- 
effective, at  best  successful  only  outwardly  and 
temporarily,  self -deceiving  and  self-defeating; 
for  of  two  things  that  life  needs  neither  can  be 
only  means  or  only  end.  I  find  myself  actually 
wondering  if  this  time-honored  distinction  be- 
tween end  and  means,  as  a  way,  conscious  or 
unconscious,  of  distributing  intimate  factors  of 
life,  has  not  been  to  blame  for  many  errors  of 
action  and  fallacies  of  thought  in  human  his- 
tory. Beyond  any  peradventures  it  has  again 
and  again  at  least  seriously  distorted  both 
thought  and  life. 

But,  as  to  the  matter  in  hand,  it  does  seem 
clear  that  for  their  better  mentality  or  for  their 
more  direct  service  in  the  overt  activities 
life  reaction  and  revolution,  each  in  itself  so 
distorted  for  being  only  half  of  the  truth,  each 
to  the  other  opposed  and  yet  also  complement- 
ary, neither  in  itself  adequate  to  complete  liv- 
ing, need  to  establish,  or  to  have  established  for 
them,  a  real  liaison.  Only  the  two  together,  not 
as  in  their  usual  partisan  encounters  but  in 

[67] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

conscious  cooperation,  can  make  at  once  effective 
and  progressive  life  possible.  Only  with  their 
real  reconciliation  and  cooperation  can  there 
be  even  an  approach  to  a  solution  of  the  great 
problem  of  adjustment  to  which  their  very  an- 
tagonism with  the  abnormalities  of  it  and  the 
distorted  end-and-means  distribution  of  life's 
great  factors  bears  dramatic  witness.  So,  I  say 
again,  a  real  liaison  is  needed. 

A  liaison,  however,  is  possible  only  through 
the  comprehensive  and  vital  unity  of  personal 
individuality;  not  necessarily  of  any  particular 
individual,  although  usually  some  one  will  take 
the  lead  conspicuously,  but  of  personal  individ- 
uality at  large.  Characteristically,  it  should  be 
remembered,  the  individual  person  has  an  open- 
ness of  mind  and  will,  a  breadth  of  nature,  a 
depth  of  insight  or  intuition,  an  imagination  and 
humor,  that  make  him  always  potentially  a 
solvent  for  all  the  differences  that  disrupt 
human  life  and  human  society.  Only  person- 
ality, as  it  comes  to  large  and  important  expres- 
sion in  one  or  in  a  few  or  to  less  degrees  in  men 
generally,  can  lead  the  times  out  of  the  captivity 
of  parties  and  partisanship,  reactionary 

[68] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

or  revolutionary,  under  which  they  suffer. 
Eeaction  and  revolution  alike  are  socially  mas- 
sive or  corporate,  the  work  of  the  conventional 
herd  or  the  empassioned  mob;  adjustment  and 
positive  progress  are  personal.  The  herd  has 
its  servile  creatures,  occupants  of  office;  the 
mob  its  demagogues,  always  office-seekers;  but 
these  are  neither  real  leaders  nor  whole  per- 
sons; and  the  time's  great  challenge  is  to  the 
whole  person,  through  whom  and  only  through 
whom  our  abnormal  life  and  mentality,  reac- 
tionary or  revolutionary,  spiritualistic  or 
visionary,  automatic  and  degenerate  or  violent 
and  futuristic,  can  be  corrected.  Only  through 
the  whole  person  can  either  the  spiritualism  be 
replaced  by  an  active  and  effective  spirituality 
or  the  futurism  by  an  intelligent  and  soberly 
articulate  idealism.  The  past  surely  is  not 
something  dead  to  be  heeded  literally  and  re- 
vived mysteriously  and  irrationally;  the  future 
is  not  a  life  at  once  so  sudden  and  novel  and  so 
perfect  as  to  warrant  the  suicide,  or  hari  kari, 
of  the  present  with  use  of  its  own  instruments 
against  itself;  past  and  future  are  inseparable 
for  real  life,  for  the  progress  that  is  real;  and 

[69] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

only  the  person,  who  is  the  only  vital  unit  of 
real  life,  can  both  retain  the  past  and  attain 
the  future.  The  day's  call  may  or  may  not  be 
a  call  for  some  great  leadership.  It  is,  in  any 
case,  a  call  for  some  general  release  of  person- 
ality open-minded  and  open-willed.  Only  with 
such  release  can  a  sane  mentality  be  restored. 
Only  so,  making  for  spirituality  without  spirit- 
ualism and  idealistic  adventure  without  revo- 
lution, can  a  new  life  find  expression  and  media- 
tion in  the  old  ways. 


in. 


TURNING  now  from  the  time's  state  of 
mind,  abnormal  and  at  least  potential 
with  important  adventure  and  progres- 
sive leadership,  to  things  that  are  perhaps  more 
ponderable,  to  actual  and  positive  affairs,  I  shall 
hardly  be  contradicted  and  may  even  be  only 
tiresome,  if  I  remark  that  our  two  great  prac- 
tical problems  today,  thanks  to  obtrusive 
changes  that  have  taken  place,  are  (1)  the  prob- 
lem of  industry  and  especially  of  labor  and  (2) 
the  problem,  let  me  not  say,  as  so  many  would, 
of  nationality  or  internationalism,  but  of 
nationality  and  internationalism. 

With  reference  to  both  of  these  problems  the 
people  at  large,  not  to  say  also  many  who  have 
seemed  critically  reflective,  have  certainly  been 
too  much  under  the  spell  —  which  shoulcl  be 
recognized  here  as  always  inviting  reaction  or 
revolution  —  of  the  familiar  either-or  point  of 
view.  Either  labor  or  capital,  impossibly  both! 

[71] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

Either  nationalism  or  internationalism,  not 
under  any  circumstances  both!  In  each  of  these 
issues,  as  they  have  sharpened,  each  side  has 
been  disposed  to  view  the  other  as  something, 
not  to  be  adjusted  and  made  responsible  and 
mediate,  but  to  be  suppressed  or  quite  elim- 
inated and  to  regard  itself  as  somehow  intrinsic 
and  final,  unqualifiedly  an  end  in  itself,  the  "all 
in  all. " 

Illustrating  very  well  this  either-or  attitude 
there  is  in  the  case  of  the  political  issue  the 
very  common  view  of  internationalism  —  even 
aggressive  internationalists  entertaining  it- 
as  significantly  only  disarmament  or  mere  paci- 
ficism and  of  this  as  requiring,  not  merely  the 
passing  of  militarism,  but  also  the  ending  of 
any  real  nationalism.  Forget  country  and  culti- 
vate the  international  mind!  Nationalism,  on 
its  side,  must  be  aggressively  one  hundred  per 
cent,  brooking  no  alliances,  admitting  no  out- 
side obligations,  being  real  only  if  indepen- 
dent and  quite  self -maintaining  and  duly 
jealous.  In  the  industrial  issue,  in  like  manner, 
the  call  is  for  stopping  either  the  selfishness  and 
violence  of  labor  or  the  selfishness  and  the  us- 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

ually  more  legal  —  or  at  least  more  legalistic 
-  violence  of  capital. 

Why  must  men  think  so  one-sidedly,  so  ab- 
stractly? Such  either-or-ism  can  lead  nowhere; 
its  essential  fallacy  is  quite  obvious;  its  effect 
can  be  only  continued  trouble;  it  can  bring  no 
settlement  of  the  issues.  Would  there  be,  could 
there  be,  any  success  even  for  prohibition,  if 
the  reform  were  not  positively  and  construc- 
tively motivated?  Even  as  conditions  are,  the 
Eighteenth  Amendment,  taking  away  certain 
socially  dangerous  drinking  "  rights, "  has  led 
to  an  outbreak  of  special  selfishness  and  lawless- 
ness. My  point,  a  familiar  one,  is  that  flat 
affirmation  or  flat  suppression  or  mutual  exclu- 
sion can  solve  no  problem.  Where  there  is  a 
real  problem,  the  very  conditions  giving  it  rise 
call  for  something  different.  If  the  two  issues 
of  our  day  be  real  issues,  they  must  indicate  or 
demand,  not  the  complete  passing  of  anything 
nor  the  unqualified  justification  of  anything,  but 
a  condition  of  transition  and  readjustment  of 
everything  and  so  the  coming  of  new  things  all 
along  the  line;  specifically,  a  new  nationalism, 
a  new  internationalism,  for  both  labor  and 

[73] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

capital  a  new  industrialism.  Mere  " peace,"  com- 
ing to  a  nation  with  disarmament  and  cessation 
of  military  conflict,  could  hardly  be  regarded 
as  alone  and  in  itself  necessarily  a  real  gain.  It 
could  not  meet  the  whole  need.  The  victory  of 
it  would  be  empty,  leaving  only  the  always 
abhorred  and  properly  dangerous  vacuum.  In- 
dustrially, too,  just  the  passing  of  strikes  or  of 
capitalistic  Toryism  would  bring  us  no  substan- 
tial advantage.  Is  any  problem  ever  solved  by 
mere  cleaning  of  the  house?  No  house-cleaning 
ever  was  only  to  get  rid  of  something.  Or  by 
shutting  everything  in?  The  very  impulse  for 
such  isolation  shows  an  interest  in  something 
real  outside. 

The  either-or  attitude,  then,  must  not  be  ours, 
as  we  take  up  the  two  issues.  We  shall  have 
further  illustrations  of  it  in  each  case.  "We  do 
well,  however,  to  appreciate  at  once  that  in  gen- 
eral labor  and  capital,  nationality  and  inter- 
nationalism are  the  real  problems  which  we  are 
to  consider.  As  to  other  problems  of  the  times, 
there  are  many  others  of  course;  these  others, 
too,  are  urgent;  problems  of  social  life,  of  a 

[74] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

different  education,  of  public  health,  of  leisure, 
of  a  more  enlightened  morality;  but  with  our 
present  purpose  it  suffices  to  consider  the  two 
apparently  most  in  the  public  consciousness. 


[75] 


IV. 

IN  INDUSTRY  laborers  have  long  been  feel- 
ing their  actual  part  and  so  their  right  to 
candid  and  formal  recognition  as  having 
actual  part  in  the  productive  industrial  life  of 
the  country  and  even  of  the  world.  I  say  even  of 
the  world,  since  it  has  often  seemed  as  if  there 
were  more  sense  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  of 
common  humanity  if  not,  as  some  would  have 
it,  of  the  international  life,  among  laborers  than 
in  any  other  group.  Still,  be  this  as  it  may, 
while  the  events  of  the  war  did  not  create  the 
feeling  of  participation,  they  undoubtedly  did 
help  to  define  it  and  so  to  strengthen  it  greatly, 
bringing  it  to  a  climax  of  conviction.  To  begin 
with,  whether  volunteering  or  drafted,  the  lab- 
orers served  in  the  war.  More  than  this,  the  in- 
dustries, in  which  they  had  been  employed  or 
often  continued  to  be  employed,  were  speeded 
up  for  the  very  vital  purposes  of  the  war.  Large 
profits  were  realized,  to  say  nothing  of  the  mili- 
tary success  that  came  in  good  time;  and  while 

[76] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

the  profit  and  high  wages  were  perhaps  only 
secondary  or  even  external  factors,  as  tempor- 
ary as  extraordinary,  they  have  had  a  consid- 
erable share  in  exalting  the  position  and 
developing  the  consciousness  of  labor.  Add, 
too,  the  world- wide  character  of  the  war  as  well 
as  of  modern  industrialism  and  commerce  and 
one  can  easily  appreciate  the  present  urgency 
of  the  labor  problem.  This  problem  is,  again, 
the  pressure  of  a  now  clearly  conscious  parti- 
cipation in  industrial  production,  conscious  as 
never  before  and  now  demanding  both  moral 
and  legal  recognition;  and,  giving  it  weight  and 
insistence,  there  is  the  conviction  of  world- 
size  and  world-importance.  Also  there  is  the 
fact  that,  as  never  before,  in  its  conduct  and  its 
productivity  industry  in  general  is  becoming 
manifestly  a  public  affair,  not  just  here  and 
there  but  generally  and  at  large  a  '  *  public  util- 
ity. "  Here,  once  more,  the  war  did  much  to 
punctuate  the  fact. 

Too  much  may  easily  be  made  of  the  situation 
as  I  have  now  presented  it.  Too  much  has 
already  been  made  of  it,  especially  by  labor  in 
its  either-or  moods.  Should  labor  ever  read 

[77] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

what  I  have  here  written,  it  would  welcome  my 
statement,  unduly  exaggerate  its  meaning,  infer 
anticapitalism  and  jump  to  the  conclusion 
that  I  foresaw  labor  eventually  in  full  control 
of  industry.  Such  saltation  would  be  very 
absurd.  All  that  I  foresee  as  the  outcome,  what- 
ever extravagances  may  intervene,  is  a  truly 
positive  and  candid  industrial  democracy,  which 
would  have  to  be  very  far  indeed  from  a  full 
control  by  labor.  Why  must  any  new  steps  in 
democracy  involve  so  much  delusion  and  tra- 
gedy? Has  political  democracy  in  its  outcome 
brought  undirected  and  generally  unchecked 
and  arbitrary  popular  government? 

The  demand  for  a  candid  industrial  democ- 
racy is,  I  may  assume,  now  clear.  Who  has  not 
had  some  sense  of  it?  Not  the  fact  or  warrant 
of  it,  then,  but  the  best  way  of  satisfying  it,  of 
meeting  it  wisely  and  effectively,  is  the  prob- 
lem confronting  us.  Help  to  a  solution,  as  just 
now  hinted,  might  come  and,  so  far  as  analogies 
may  help,  ought  to  come  from  the  past.  Several 
centuries  ago  in  the  history  of  Christendom 
there  was  demand,  also  prompted  by  actual  and 
inescapable  conditions,  which  had  developed  or 

[78] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

been  achieved  with  the  course  of  history,  for  a 
political  democracy.  Thus  in  those  earlier  days 
political  subjects,  who  in  spirit  when  not  liter- 
ally, when  not  in  actual  service,  were  only  so 
many  soldiers,  the  mere  creatures  of  a  higher 
directing  power,  came  finally,  as  result  of  their 
own  hard  achievement  and  creative  service,  to 
a  realization  in  fact  and  a  conviction  in  con- 
sciousness of  their  part  and  importance  in  the 
then  public  life  and  thereupon  they  insisted  on 
certain  rights  consistent  with  such  accom- 
plished participation  and  its  achievements.  To 
all  intents  and  purposes  did  they  not  declare 
that  kings  and  potentates  should  no  longer  be 
thought  of  as  the  favored  and  commissioned  of 
God  but  that  all  men  were  politically  compe- 
tent, free  and  equal?  Indeed  had  not  those 
soldier-subjects,  merely  by  their  measure  of 
success  in  doing  what  their  recognized  rulers 
had  willed,  proved  the  competence  and  equality? 
Sooner  or  later,  if  only  there  be  achievement, 
any  soldier  may  aspire  to  command;  any  subject 
may  feel  his  own  royalty. 

Came,   then,  the   great  distribution  in  the 
eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries,  if 

[79] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

one  may  give  it  even  round  dates,  when  all  men, 
"by  God  created  equal, "  got  the  formerly  ex- 
clusive as  well  as  divine  rights  of  kings  and 
potentates,  the  rights  of  earthly  life,  personal 
liberty  and  happiness  or  safety  in  possession  of 
home  and  property.  Whereupon  democracy 
took  a  great  step  forward.  Of  course  many 
have  called  those  eighteenth  century  political 
rights  "natural  rights; "  but  so-called  they 
might  be  easily  misunderstood.  Often  they 
have  been  misunderstood.  However  "natural," 
they  certainly  could  not  be  "  rights "  until  they 
had  been  won  or  achieved  and  also,  as  very  im- 
portant to  remember,  because  commonly  over- 
looked, they  must,  being  more  than  lofty 
abstractions,  have  a  definite  meaning  deter- 
mined by  the  actual  conditions,  local  and 
temporal,  of  their  winning. 

Indeed  I  have  to  think  of  that  distribution, 
so  intimately  related  to  the  history  of  our  own 
country,  as  only  signalling  or  registering  in  the 
progress  of  Christendom  man's  physical  and 
largely  only  superficial  and  residential  conquest 
of  the  earth.  Prior  to  the  eighteenth  century 
man  had  hardly  belonged  on  earth;  rather  he 

[80] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

was  really  only  a  stranger  and  a  much  troubled 
sojourner  here,  belonging  and  eventually  pass- 
ing yonder.  If  here  he  enjoyed  any  sanctioned 
communal  life,  the  equality  of  it  was  spiritual, 
not  in  any  way  earthly  and  concrete.  Then  man 
enjoyed,  as  common  and  equal  rights,  probably 
quite  "natural"  to  the  times  but  wholly  nega- 
tive as  to  life  on  earth,  the  right  to  die,  perhaps 
as  martyrs  died,  to  be  ascetic  even  to  deliberate 
self-mortification  and  in  hope  and  faith  to 
await  safety  and  happiness  in  the  Home  Here- 
after. But  that  time  passed  and,  thanks  to  con- 
quests and  explorations  and  discoveries  east  and 
west,  geographical  and  intellectual,  thanks  to 
hard  experience  and  adaptation  and  real  en- 
lightenment, man  found  the  earth  to  be,  what 
he  had  succeeded  in  making  it,  his  natural 
home,  and  so  he  claimed  and  got  those  "nat- 
ural" rights  of  life  on  earth.  Did  I  not  repre- 
sent them  as  the  rights  of  earthly  life,  of 
personal  or  bodily  liberty,  of  safety  and  happi- 
ness in  possession  of  property  and  an  earthly 
home? 

So  in  the  history  of  Christendom  did  man 
come  into  the  possession  of  the  earth  —  super- 

[81] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

ficially,  residentially.  That  his  success  was  the 
achievement  of  militarism  and  monarchy  and 
of  the  political,  intellectual  and  spiritual  accom- 
paniments of  these  will,  I  think,  be  recognized. 
The  instrument  and  the  accomplishment  were  in 
such  perfect  accord.  But,  the  earth  possessed, 
life  and  residence  and  property  reasonably  se- 
cure, and  the  won  rights  distributed,  man  natur- 
ally came  to  a  new  interest  in  his  earth.  Indeed 
his  demand  for  the  political  democracy  of  those 
rights  was  no  mere  protest  against  militarism 
and  its  purposes,  but  was  positively  in  response 
to  the  new  interest.  Possessed,  the  earth  was 
next  to  be,  not  explored,  but  exploited.  After 
conquest  should  come  improvement,  intensive 
development.  Gradually  but  surely  militarism 
gave  way  to  industrialism. 

And  now,  at  least  since  the  war,  man  feels 
and,  as  has  been  pointed  out," is  openly  claiming 
his  right  to  something  more  than  just  common 
natural  possession  and  residence.  Has  he 
not  actually  and  manifestly  achieved  more? 
Enough,  at  least,  to  justify  a  claim?  Have  not 
that  new  interest  and  the  life  prompted  by  it 
and  actually  made  possible  by  the  political 

[82] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

democracy  at  last  borne  results  and  brought 
him  to  a  time  of  another  general  distribution? 
Man  would  simply  have  his  " natural  rights" 
brought  up  to  date.  During  the  later  process 
of  achievement,  as  during  the  earlier,  there  had 
to  be  some  leadership  of  person  or  class;  as 
before,  there  had  to  be  subjection  and  sometimes 
tyranny  and  abuse;  but,  necessary  and  often 
costly  as  these  are  to  achievement,  they  must 
always  in  the  fulness  of  time  have  outcome  in 
a  distributing  and  levelling  democracy. 

So,  with  industrialism's  accomplishments, 
either  the  old  rights,  those  acquired  in  the 
eighteenth  century  and  now  very  generally  en- 
joyed, must  take  on  a  new  wealth  of  meaning, 
getting  a  recognized  content  more  consistent 
with  the  new  life  and  its  peculiar  successes,  or 
there  must  be  adopted  a  wholly  new  bill  of 
rights.  Industrialism  in  its  turn  has  won  its 
victories,  victories  of  transformation,  of  inven- 
tion and  manufacture  or  artif acture,  of  develop- 
ment or  creative  residence  and  the  fighters,  all 
the  mobilized  workers,  have  now  to  be  paid; 
yet  not  with  mere  wages  or  bonuses;  rather  with 
the  reward,  at  once  more  lasting  and  more  vital 

[83] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

and  substantial,  of  larger  rights  and  more  im- 
importance.  Again,  a  new  distribution  is  due 
and  an  industrial  democracy  is  called  for.  Only 
now,  as  before,  democracy  and  its  distributed 
rights  are,  not  abstractions,  but  matters  of  the 
given  context.  The  workers,  in  other  words,  must 
not  expect  the  time  to  reward  them  beyond  its 
means.  Industrial  democracy  may  not  mean 
"  ergotocracy ! "  Abstractions  may  sometimes 
motivate  action,  but  at  court  or  in  the  market- 
place they  must  always  be  brought  within  what 
is  reasonable  or  subjected  to  discount.  Nor 
should  the  workers  expect  position  or  goods  or 
property  or  advantages  in  any  such  concrete 
form  for  their  rights.  Such  expectation,  offer- 
ing only  one  more  illustration  of  a  common  fal- 
lacy in  history  and  inducing  mere  revolution 
and  confiscation,  would  lead  to  more  trouble 
than  progress.  Rights  are  far  more  valuable 
than  "tips"  or  booty. 

If  a  new  bill  of  rights  were  to  be  adopted, 
what  would  the  new  rights  be  f  To  reply  at  all 
is  difficult.  To  reply  wisely  is  much  more  so. 
I  have  suggested  in  my  final  essay,  Ages  of 
Leisure,  that  a  fourth  right  might  now  be  added, 

[84] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

trusting  to  its  progressive  influence  on  the 
others:  Thus:  Life,  Liberty,  Security  and 
Leisure.  But,  if  one  must  hold  to  the  tradition 
of  three,  the  new  rights  or  the  new  values  of  the 
old  rights  might  be  set  down  as  Work,  "Welfare 
and  Worth;  work,  say,  for  a  living  wage  and 
with  a  raised  standard  of  living  at  that;  welfare 
with  implication  of  some  leisure,  at  once  the 
great  gift  of  machinery  and  the  opportunity  as 
well  as  the  demand  for  education,  and  worth  in 
the  sense  of  conscious  and  candidly  recognized 
participation  and  self-importance  in  the  coun- 
try's or  the  world's  industry  and  production. 

Still,  the  naming  of  the  new  rights  left  to 
others  more  competent  than  I,  what  in  general 
the  day's  enlargement  of  the  old  rights  ought 
to  be  must  be  fairly  clear.  Men  generally  would 
and  should  now  have  that  same  feeling  toward 
industry,  the  feeling  of  the  life  of  it  as  their 
own,  every  one  being  one  of  the  vital  units  from 
which  the  effectiveness  proceeds,  that  formerly 
they  got  towards  government  when,  all  being 
at  last  recognized  as  politically  free  and  equal, 
they  were  given  the  ballot. 

May  I  digress  a  moment  for  certain  reflections 

[85] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

on  the  difficulties  of  language  1  In  what  I  have 
said  above  of  political  democracy,  political  lib- 
erty and  equality,  as  generally  whenever  the 
term  political  has  been  used  in  these  times  by 
myself  or  by  others,  I  have  wondered  about  the 
term  itself.  Is  it  not  getting  new  meaning  in 
its  turn?  Has  not  my  use  of  it  been  too  con- 
servative? Under  the  passing  order  of  things 
the  formally  organized  public  life  of  this  people 
or  that  has  been  what  it  has  been  and  has  given 
definite  meaning  to  the  term;  but,  to  say  no 
more,  militarism  has  been  giving  way  to  indus- 
trialism and  in  consequence  a  distinct  change 
in  public  interests  and  activities  has  either  been 
effected  or  is  imminent.  Accordingly  the  term, 
political,  may  soon  have  to  move  forward.  The 
contrast  between  political  and  industrial  de- 
mocracy may  recount  an  interesting  history, 
but  obscure  a  fact.  Certainly  with  industrial- 
ism more  and  more  a  general  public  utility,  the 
industrial  and  the  political  can  not  much  longer 
be  kept  apart.  .  So  long,  indeed,  as  they  count 
as  two,  intrigue  rather  than  candor  and  direct 
cooperation  must  characterize  their  relation. 
Too  long  industry  has  been  a  lobbyist  and  here, 

[86] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

while  still  holding  to  the  traditional  usage  of 
the  words,  industrial  and  political,  we  will  at 
least  have  in  mind  that  language,  as  in  so  many 
other  cases  of  the  sort,  is  not  to  be  taken  too 
seriously. 

To  return  to  our  new  bill  of  rights,  work  and 
welfare  and  worth,  as  they  were  interpreted, 
are  rights  that  very  well  mark  the  new  spirit 
of  life  and  bring  to  all  the  ' 'freedom  of  the 
modern  city."  By  what  concrete  measures, 
analogous  to  the  grant  of  the  right  to  vote  and 
to  the  various  incidents  of  the  enjoyment  of  this 
right,  the  new  distribution  might  be  best 
realized  I  am  not  prepared  to  say.  Cooperation, 
profit-sharing,  labor-representation  among  di- 
rectors, protective  labor  legislation,  public 
health  measures,  state-medicine,  welfare  asso- 
ciations and  social  service  have  all  been  efforts, 
direct  and  indirect,  at  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem and  may  be  said,  all  of  them,  to  be  influences 
for  industrial  democracy;  but  for  the  most  part 
they  have  been  palliative  measures  rather  than 
candid  and  adequate  solutions.  Hardly  have 
they  really  changed  the  status  of  labor  or  in 
any  important  degree  increased  the  responsi- 

[87] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

bility  of  capital  industrially.  It  may  be  ques- 
tioned if  any  such  purposes  were  seriously  in- 
volved in  any  of  them  or  if  they  have  really 
escaped  the  partisan  or  either-or  point  of  view. 
A  friend,  who  has  thought  much  on  labor  prob- 
lems, at  least  to  more  purpose  and  with  more 
courage  has  suggested,  among  many  other 
things  of  interest,  that  the  laborers  in  any  in- 
dustry should  have  a  right  to  stock  in  that 
industry  at  a  reasonable  price  determined  by 
the  business,  not  by  the  gambling  of  a  pro- 
fessionally manipulated  stock-market,  and  that 
such  right  should  be  secured  to  him,  if  neces- 
sary, even  by  some  application  of  the  principle 
of  eminent  domain.  Again,  as  I  have  read,  yet 
can  not  recall  where,  under  some  application  of 
the  same  principle  the  state  acting  as  trustee 
for  the  people  might  secure  and  hold  in  any 
industry,  especially  where  the  industry  clearly 
is  a  public  utility,  an  amount  of  stock  represent- 
ing some  considerable  part  of  the  unearned 
increases,  although  of  course  allowance  should 
probably  be  made  for  special  return  to  enter- 
prise and  initiative.  These  suggestions  may  be 
quite  impractical;  some  may  find  them 

[88] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

fantastic;  but  they  have  the  merit  of  really 
granting  something  and  they  may  be  taken  as 
indicating  the  sort  of  thing  that  is  called  for, 
There  can  be  no  progress,  no  solution,  without 
real  concessions. 

The  concessions,  moreover,  very  obviously 
must  be  from  both  sides  in  any  issue.  Whoever 
accepts  privilege  must  face  responsibility.  Who- 
ever yields  power  must  get  better  service. 
Eights  always  carry  equivalent  duties  and  also 
may  be  really  justified  and  enjoyed  only  where 
there  is  due  intelligence.  These  commonplaces 
aside,  labor  on  its  side  must  check  extravagant 
demands.  In  the  earlier  time,  when  all  finally 
felt  their  royalty  and  got  equality  with  kings, 
by  no  means  all  were  put  in  the  high  places. 
The  ballot  brought  only  common  opportunity, 
often  more  theoretical  than  practical,  not  com- 
mon status.  Furthermore,  as  the  analogy  of 
the  earlier  time  should  check  the  wilder  hopes 
of  labor,  so  also  should  it  have  its  lesson  for 
capital.  Members  of  the  heretofore  industrially 
privileged,  directing  and  stockholding  and 
dividend-receiving  or  coupon-cutting  class,  who 
have  been  given  to  resenting  labor's  claims, 

[89] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

may  see  themselves  clearly  reflected  in  the  kings 
and  the  court,  in  the  Tories  and  their  sort,  who 
as  the  politically  privileged  class  resented  the 
rise  of  political  democracy  but  could  not  pre- 
vent and  in  the  end  at  least  after  a  few  gener- 
ations learned  to  accept  and  even  applaud  it. 
As  formally  and  instrumentally  a  society  of 
political  differences  continued  to  operate  or 
function  even  after  that  earlier  distribution  of 
rights,  so  today  with  the  later  distribution 
there  must  still  be  differences,  industrial  diff- 
erences. In  any  time,  under  any  scheme  of 
social  life,  only  the  very  few  may  occupy  the 
high  places  and  for  actual  life  there  must  always 
be  high  places  and  the  leadership  of  them.  It 
is  not  aristocracy  that  hurts,  but  irrespon- 
sibility. Democracy,  in  actual  life,  always 
opposes  an  irresponsible,  traditionally  privi- 
leged, arbitrary  and  outgrown  aristocracy  and 
at  the  same  time  enables,  when  it  does  not  con- 
sciously foster,  one  that  is  responsible  and,  for 
being  under  a  higher  system  of  values,  also  pro- 
gressive. Again,  typically  in  the  change  which 
any  democratic  movement  effects,  the  existing 
social  distinctions  and  institutions  are  not 

[90] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

destroyed  but  simply  put  to  general  public  use, 
being  made  standard  and  generally  available 
methods  or  instruments  instead  of  the  fixed  and 
closed  institutes  they  had  come  to  be.  Arbitrary 
kings  and  their  councils  and  nobles  passed; 
presidents  and  cabinets  and  parliaments  took 
their  places;  while,  coincidently,  a  subject 
people  became  an  electorate  and  industry  and 
development  gained  in  interest  over  conquest 
and  residence. 

Concluding  this  section  of  my  essay,  I  hardly 
need  to  say,  as  if  in  refrain,  that  the  conditions 
and  tendencies  which  have  been  pointed  out 
reveal  decidedly  active  opportunities  for  a  pro- 
gressive leadership.  Moreover,  while  persons 
can  not  always  be  counted  on  to  realize  and 
justify  their  birthright  of  freedom,  too  often 
proving  mere  creatures  of  tradition  and  the 
"closed  institute,"  only  personality  can  ever 
lead.  Only  persons  can  escape  the  either-or 
mentality  which  has  been  obstructing  industrial 
progress. 


[91] 


V. 

THE  " political "  issue  of  the  national  and 
the  international  remains  to  be  consid- 
ered. As  urgent  today,  this  is  really  no 
distinct  issue.  It  is  only  a  specially  interesting 
phase  of  the  call  for  progress  in  democracy,  for 
an  industrial  democracy,  with  which  the  mili- 
taristic nationalism,  so  long  in  vogue  and  cul- 
tivated in  spirit  when  not  in  letter,  when  not 
overtly,  does  not  and  can  not  accord.  It  is, 
again,  undoubtedly  an  incident  of  the  coming 
of  new  meaning  for  the  term  political,  since 
with  the  change  in  conscious  and  active  public 
interest,  with  the  passing  of  militarism  and  the 
new  instrumentation  of  life  through  automatic 
machinery,  a  new  nationalism  must  be  supplant- 
ing the  old.  Militarism  was  materially  checked 
with  the  distribution  of  those  natural  rights  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  but  now  it  would  seem 
about  to  be  discredited  altogether.  To  perpet- 
uate it  now  would  be  to  betray  the  new  democ- 
racy and  the  new  politics. 

[92] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

Now  the  passing  and  the  coming  eras  have 
been  characterized  here  as  eras  respectively  of 
conquest  and  residence  and  of  exploitation  and 
development,  the  residence  having  proved 
"creative."  Is  it  not  a  noteworthy  sign  of  the 
times  that  geography,  as  a  science,  is  showing 
changes  as  if  in  sympathy?  The  science  of 
geography  is  also  no  longer  the  militaristic,  ter- 
ritorial thing  it  once  was,  depending  largely  on 
maps  and  dealing  as  it  did  primarily  just  with 
places  and  boundaries,  mountains  and  rivers 
and  seas,  areas,  populations  and  the  like.  As  I 
recall  the  "jogrofy"  of  my  youth  I  could 
almost  accuse  it  of  being  intended  propaganda 
for  militarism.  But  today,  unless  I  be  very 
much  mistaken,  the  qualities  of  the  earth 
rather  than  its  quantities,  the  life-values  rather 
than  the  mere  boundaries  and  dimensions,  inten- 
sion rather  than  extension,  are  of  primary  inter- 
est to  geographers.  We  hear,  for  example,  of 
regional  geography,  of  anthropo-geography,  of 
economic  geography,  as  different  from  mere 
surface  geography  as  intensive  agriculture  from 
old-fashioned  farming,  and  in  this  new 

[93] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

geography  he  who  runs  certainly  may  read  the 
new  public  life  and  the  new  nationalism. 

But  what  if  not  just  this  new  nationalism 
has  been  the  real  meaning  and  purpose  of  the 
persistent  demand  in  recent  times  for  better 
understanding  among  the  nations?  True,  as 
was  said  above,  many  have  refused  to  see  any- 
thing so  positive  in  that  demand.  They  have 
insisted  on  seeing  only  the  internationalism  and 
—  here  being  the  trouble  —  on  seeing  this  as 
only  a  sort  of  general  political  universalism, 
possible  only  with  virtual  loss  of  anything  like 
a  vigorous  and  genuine  nationalism.  But,  in 
spite  of  such  either-or  thinking,  there  has 
already  come  about,  in  the  form  of  a  union  or 
league  or  association,  a  democracy  of  nations 
and  with  or  without  formal  benefit  of  this  union, 
yet  always  carrying  out  purposes  essentially  in 
sympathy  with  its  purposes,  there  have  been 
various  international  conferences  and  treaties ; 
and  all  this  without  even  the  threatened  dis- 
appearance or  submergence  of  any  of  the  par- 
ticipating nations.  Unless  it  be  that  the  only 
possible  nation  of  vigor  and  genuine  patriotism 
is  the  nation  that  is  jealous  and  full-armed,  the 

[94] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

union  and  the  conferences  surely  must  repre- 
sent something  more  than  a  momentary  reaction 
against  war.  Internationalism,  if  meaning  and 
seeking  only  flat  peace,  disarmament  or  limita- 
tion of  armament,  would  surely  breed  war 
rather  than  outgrow  it.  Union,  league,  federa- 
tion, association  or  conference,  call  it  even 
Verein,  since  no  name,  whatever  it  be  or  in 
whatever  language,  could  worry  me,  can  be  no 
mere  manoeuvre  of  a  dull  and  futile  pacifism 
or  a  stupid  political  universalism.  A  real,  self- 
assertive  full-blooded  and  antimilitaristic 
nationalism,  quite  outdoing  the  nationalism  of 
the  past,  must  be  seeking  expression  and, 
according  as  we  heed  this  internationalism  of 
the  time,  we  may  look,  not  for  less,  but  for 
better,  meaning  among  other  things  more 
sportsmanlike  competition  among  the  nations. 
In  the  relations  of  individuals  the  development 
of  rules  of  rivalry,  involving  removal  of 
unsportsman  like  ways,  such  as  hidden  daggers, 
quick  triggers,  kicking  and  cheating,  all  of  which 
have  their  international  analogues,  has  not 
taken  from  the  great  game  of  life  in  any  of  its 
phases  any  of  its  real  interest  and  vigor; 

[95] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

rather  has  the  game  always  been  made  more 
worth  while. 

In  much  of  the  thinking  about  the  present 
internationalism  there  have  been  two  fallacies 
that  may  well  be  pointed  out,  one  as  to  the 
real  meaning  of  i  i  Self-determination, ' '  so  much 
discussed  toward  the  war's  close  and  during 
the  making  of  peace,  and  the  other  as  to  the 
novelty  of  internationalism. 

Self-determination,  proclaimed  as  every 
nation's  right  and  actually  involving  protest 
against  some  form  of  determination  from  out- 
side, is  just  one  more  of  those  cries  that  in 
their  rise  refer  to  peculiar  conditions  of  their 
time  but  come  to  be  taken,  sometimes  even  by 
their  original  advocates,  yet  more  often  by  their 
opponents,  as  wholly  general,  as  unqualified  and 
absolute.  A  sweeping,  unqualified  generaliza- 
tion is  so  easily  discredited  and  generalization 
itself  is  popularly  so  much  easier  than  discrim- 
ination. It  will  be  remembered  that  democracy 
and  equality  and  in  particular  the  natural  rights 
of  life  and  liberty  and  happiness  were  just  such 
cries,  easily  abstracted  from  their  inciting  con- 
text and  made  very  troublesome  generalities. 

[96] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

Self-determination,  interpreted  in  the  light  of 
its  origin,  should  be  taken  as  specifically  a 
nation's  or  people's  right  against  military  con- 
trol from  outside  and  so,  if  enjoyed  equally  by 
all,  as  basis  for  an  international  democracy. 
The  internationalists,  then,  may  well  advocate 
it  for  its  assurance  of  equality  among  the 
nations  independently  of  their  size  and  military 
strength ;  but  they  may  not  honestly  and  wisely, 
relevantly  and  historically,  take  it  more 
abstractly,  as  if  it  were  to  cover  all  possible 
conditions  and  relations.  To  stop  international 
interferences  in  a  certain  respect,  making  all 
equal  in  regard  to  that,  is  still  to  permit  rivalries 
and  possible  superiorities  and  determination 
ab  extra.  It  is,  however,  also  to  raise  the  qual- 
ity of  the  rivalry,  making  the  game,  as  we  were 
saying,  a  better  game  and  raising  the  character 
of  the  nationalism,  the  best  nation  under  the 
new  system  of  values  or  the  new  rules  still 
being  free  to  lead. 

But,  perhaps  more  serious  than  the  fallacy 
of  abstract  self-determination,  is  that  of  inter- 
nationalism as  historically  a  novelty.  In  Amer- 
ica, I  suspect,  this  fallacy  has  had  special  vogue, 

[97] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

although  we  may  claim  no  monopoly  of  it.    It 
has  too  well  served  the  purposes  of  our  par- 
tisans who,  honestly  or  only  politically,  have 
been  bent   on   treating   nationalism   and   any 
genuine  internationalism  as  things  hopelessly 
incongruous.    And  how  they  have  talked !  Inter- 
nationalism, they  say,  is  an  impossible  futurism. 
Now  or  hereafter,  as  in  the  past,  no  nation  can 
ever  suffer  its  entanglements.     Man  may  not 
put  together  whom  God  has  placed  asunder. 
Patriotic  one  can  not  be  and  internationally 
minded  at  the  same  time.    The  internationalist ! 
What  but  a  man  without  a  country,  despicable 
and  to  some  country  treacherous!    Or,  on  the 
other  side,  what  is  the  loyal  and  earnest,  per- 
haps over  earnest,  lover  of  his  country  but  a 
blatant   jingo;   perhaps    a   hundred   per   cent 
American,  but  not  even  three  per  cent  human; 
narrow  in  mind,  petty  and  primitive  in  feeling 
and  purpose !    But,  the  partisanship  of  all  this 
aside  and  due  respect  allowed  to  all  who  have 
thought  as  they  have  seemed  to  think  honestly, 
however  superficially,  the  facts  in  the  case  jus- 
tify no  such  feelings  or  views. 

Internationalism  is  no  dream.    It  is  no  nov- 

[98] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

elty.    History  is  as  familiar  with  it  as  with  any- 
thing in  the  whole  field  of  politics.    History  has 
shown  that  there  is  no  essential  incongruity 
between  nationalism  and  internationalism.  Has 
there,  in  point  of  historic  fact,  ever  been  either 
one  of  the  two  without  the  other  ?  True,  between 
one  for  one  era  and  the  other  for  a  later  era 
there  may,  nay,  must  appear  incongruity.    Yet 
why  —  except  of  course  for  party  reasons  —  be 
misled  by  this?     Is  important  thinking  to  be 
based  on  anachronisms!    I  remember  a  fellow 
who  had  broken  two  marriage  engagements  and 
hesitated  to  enter  a  third,  because,  as  he  said 
in  his  great  worrying,  he  was  "forever  out- 
growing the  girl,"  getting  quite  ahead  of  her 
time.     She  was,  poor  creature,  ever  becoming 
his  dear  but  no  longer  dear  anachronism !    But 
not  so  in  history  the  relations  of  international- 
ism and  nationalism.     These  have  developed 
together;  arm  in  arm,  if  you  must  have  it  so. 
What  do  I  mean  when  I  say  or  imply,  that 
internationalism,  far  from  being  a  novelty  of 
our  time,  is  a  commonplace  of  history?    I  mean 
more  than  my  present  space  permits  me  to  say. 
I  mean  at  least  this:     The  nations  we  know 

[99] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

today,  the  nations  of  Christendom  or,  even  more 
broadly,  of  the  civilized  modern  world,  have 
had  a  common  origin  besides  having  in  some 
real  sense  a  common  destiny.  The  phrase  "the 
nations  of  Christendom"  or  "the  civilized 
nations"  is  not  an  empty,  meaningless  phrase, 
holding  no  content  of  real  life  and  conscious 
unity.  Indeed  our  internationalism  is  as  old 
as  our  nationalism,  as  old  as  Rome  and  Christ- 
endom. That  it  had  a  precarious  youth  is  as 
true  as  natural.  So,  however,  did  its  insepar- 
able companion  and  perennial  contemporary, 
nationalism;  the  two,  midst  many  vicissitudes, 
growing  stronger  and  stronger  side  by  side, 
even  shoulder  to  shoulder,  through  conflicts  and 
rivalries,  balances  of  power,  understandings, 
alliances,  Monroeisms,  conventions  and  confer- 
ences and  leagues ;  and  the  result  is  now  what 
we  see,  no  suddenly  new  thing,  but  a  vigorous 
growth  out  of  the  past.  The  step  forward 
today  can  be  only  to  continue  a  life,  at  once 
national  and  international,  vigorously  the 
former,  quite  practicably  the  latter,  which 
began,  not  to  go  farther  back,  with  the  Roman 
Empire  and  the  Christian  Church,  and  which 

[100] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

would  today  only  come  more  fully  to  its  own. 
Strange  —  is  it  not?  —  that  the  one  great 
nation,  our  own,  which  has  not  yet  joined  the 
new  union,  the  United  Nations  of  the  World, 
is  in  its  composition,  in  its  actual  life,  domestic 
or  foreign,  and  in  its  essential  feeling  the  most 
international  nation  of  all,  the  United  States 
of  America.  Adam,  not  Eve,  must  have  chosen 
to  call  the  union  a  "League."  Eve  would  once 
more  have  seen  what  the  new  creature  looked 
like  and  have  had  even  the  party-ridden  United 
States  stampeding  to  join  the  United  Nations ! 
A  daily  paper,  *  which  must  be  right,  has  called 
us  "the  most  peaceful,  benevolent  and  least 
covetous  of  the  civilized  peoples  of  the  world. ' ' 
Can  it  be  possible  that  we  have  not  entered  the 
League,  being  what  we  already  are,  being  in 
character,  although  not  in  name,  a  member  of 
it!  Simply  we  have  not  felt  a  pressing  need. 
With  whatever  magnanimity,  we  have  felt  we 
could  bide  our  time.  Or,  just  because  we  are 
as  a  people  what  we  are,  because  of  the  facts 
of  our  life  and  our  history,  have  we  actually 
let  ourselves  be  intrigued  into  staying  out?  In 

*  "The  New  York  Times:"  Editorial,  February  1,  1921. 
[101] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

any  view  a  more  humorous  —  and  tragic !  - 
situation  would  be  hard  to  imagine.  When, 
after  a  period  of  benevolent  isolation,  we  finally 
entered  the  war,  who  could  possibly  have  fore- 
seen a  renewal  of  our  benevolence  ?  Who  could 
have  expected  us  to  be  post-bellum  as  well  as 
ante-bellum  pacifists!  Honest  Americans,  1  am 
sure,  must  be  between  tears  and  laughter  over 
it  all.  By  our  life  and  character  in,  on  paper 
we  are  out.  Not  needing  to  enter,  for  our  wealth 
and  independence  we  are  the  one  nation  to 
which  all  others  must  look. 

Great,  then,  must  be  the  glory  that  we  enjoy 
by  our  continued  and  so  very  enviable  isolation. 
What  would  we?  Are  we,  of  all  the  nations, 
to  take  the  role  of  an  imperial  super-state  ?  Are 
we  preferring  such  isolation  to  the  great  oppor- 
tunity of  the  real  hegemony,  modern  in  its  spirit 
and  timely  in  its  method,  that  being  one  nation 
of  the  United  Nations  would  bring  us!  I  find 
this  inconceivable.  I  have  too  much  faith  in 
facts  and  in  inevitable  destiny.  I  have  to  believe 
the  rumor  from  Washington,  the  spirit  of  it  if 
not  the  letter,  that  our  honorable  Secretary  of 
State  has  said  that  of  course,  the  necessary  polit- 

[102] 


Recent  Opportunities  of  Progressive  Leadership 

ical  manoeuvring  over,  the  United  States  would 
be  where  they  really  belong.  Doubtless  he  never 
did  speak  just  so,  but  he  easily  might  have.  At 
least  his  own  policies  have  been  eloquent. 

Finally,  in  my  simple  and  very  general  reflec- 
tions on  two  of  the  great  problems  of  the  time, 
as  well  as  on  a  certain  mentality,  abnormal  and 
adventurous,  which  has  been  much  in  evidence, 
I  have  simply  been  trying  to  represent  the 
changes,  now  pressing  upon  us,  as  active  oppor- 
tunities of  progress  and  so  as  making  possible 
a  productive  creative  leadership,  national  or, 
as  must  be  in  last  analysis  personal.  Again  and 
again  in  what  I  have  written  in  this  second  essay 
or  in  the  first  the  challenge,  if  challenge  there 
have  been,  has  been,  not  to  the  youth  or  the 
yeomanry  or  the  nobility  of  the  country,  al- 
though each  of  these  must  be  implicated,  but  to 
the  personality,  open-minded  and  open-willed, 
as  this  lives  in  every  citizen  and  as  in  some  one 
here  or  in  some  one  there  it  may  expand  into 
great  leadership.  The  past  has  given  us  great 
leaders.  The  present  must  hold  them.  The 
future  will  discover  them. 

In  the  past,  unfortunately,  violent  revolu- 

[103] 


Leadership  and  Progress 

tions  have  often  been  necessary  just  to  make 
any  real  evolution  possible ;  but  these,  as  we  all 
know,  have  caused  great  delay  and  have  been 
in  other  ways  costly.  Time  has  not  been  their 
only  expense.  But,  today,  leadership  will  be 
great  as  it  is  evolutional,  not  violently  revolu- 
tional.  Factions,  not  vital  and  enlightened  per- 
sons, breed  destructive  and  retarding  violence. 
With  our  better  understanding  of  things,  with 
our  knowledge  and  experience  from  history, 
with  our  evolutional  biology  and  psychology  and 
sociology,  with  the  sophistication  and  adapt- 
ability which  these  should  have  given,  we  have 
to  hope  at  least  for  some  reduction  in  the 
temporal  and  in  the  material  and  spiritual  cost 
of  progress. 


[104] 


PART  II 


TWO  ESSAYS  OF  PROGRESS 


III.  THE  NEWSPAPER  CONSCIENCE  —  A 
STUDY  IN  HALF-TRUTHS 

IN  THE  pleasant  age  of  once-upon-a-time 
among  certain  intellectuals  of  an  interesting 
people  there  lived  .a  man  who  combined 
with  considerable  powers  of  mind  a  disposition 
to  be  a  bit  cynical.  He  wrote  on  large  subjects 
and  once,  writing  on  "Nature,"  meaning  the 
world  of  things  in  general  that  move  and  grow, 
that  are  in  all  their  different  ways  so  many 
objects  to  our  senses,  he  added  as  a  secondary 
title,  * '  The  Non-existent, ' '  and,  if  indeed  he  was 
genuine,  thought  to  prove  his  case. 

Protagoras'  spirit,  whatever  it  was,  grim 
humor,  cynicism,  or  possibly  even  near  convic- 
tion, I  fear  is  not  dead.  Some,  I  know,  to  my 
large  title,  "The  Newspaper  Conscience, ' ' 
would  insist  that  once  more  that  secondary  title, 
' '  The  Non-existent, ' '  should  be  added,  being  so 
eminently  appropriate.  Among  such  skeptics 
or  cynics  or  humorists  I  may  possibly  belong  - 

[107] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

at  least  in  some  of  my  moods.  Certainly,  to 
be  quite  candid,  the  topic  which  was  suggested 
to  me  probably  would  not  have  come  into  my 
imagination  spontaneously,  for  conscience  is 
not  exactly  the  obtrusive  fact  of  present-day 
journalism.  Still,  let  us  not  decide  the  question 
too  hastily.  If  for  no  other  reason,  just  to  have 
a  subject  to  write  about,  I  submit  that  conscience 
after  all,  personally  or  journalistically,  is  a 
matter  of  definition.  Existent  or  non-existent, 
a  newspaper  conscience  must  depend  on  one's 
definition.  Definition,  indeed,  has  the  omnipo- 
tence of  deity,  since  anything  can  be  defined 
out  of  or  into  existence.  If  you  are  not  re- 
assured, wait.  I  mean,  please  wait.  Above  all, 
don't  take  anything  I  would  say  until  I  have 
really  finished  saying  it.  Remember,  too,  even 
with  some  intimation  of  a  possible  definition, 
that  conscience,  if  active  and  significant,  must 
not  be  confused  with  mere  conventional  morality 
or  the  habits  of  mind  or  heart  which,  with  what- 
ever lapses,  tend  to  maintain  such  morality. 

Unfortunately  for  the  success  of  my  search 
after  a  newspaper  conscience,  or  after  a  reveal- 
ing or  creating  definition,  the  times  are  far  from 

[108] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

auspicious.     Newspaperdom,  like  every  other 
department  of  life,  has  been  greatly  unsettled. 
If  the  war  left  anything  of  character  and  respon- 
sibility to  the  newspaper  or  to  anything  else,  the 
recent  campaign  has  taken  that.    Said  a  public 
speaker  in  so  many  words  not  long  ago,  voic- 
ing, I  suspect,  too  accurately  the  feeling  of  many 
the  country  over:  "The  idealism  first  aroused 
by  the  war  has  gone,  its  disappearance  only 
proving  the  charge,  brought  against  us  by  our 
enemies,  of  pharisaism.    Apparently  nothing  is 
now  left  of  our  spiritual  awakening  but  the  ouija 
board."    This  was  extravagant,  of  course, 
a    general    ouija    board    mentality,    too    well   \ 
reflected  in  our  newspapers,  in  their  "  stories " 
or  in  many  of  their  editorials,  will  have  to  be   ' 
reckoned  with  before  I  have  finished,  and  has    \ 
indeed  been  discussed  at  some  length  in  the^-i 
essays   preceding  this.     For  the  moment,  in 
evidence    of    present    conditions    simply    put 
to  yourselves  this  question :  Today,  when  news- 
paper   circulations    are    enormous,   when   the 
newspaper-reading     habit,     that     pleasantly 
rustling,       often       coffee-or-tobacco  redolent, 

[109] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

breakfast-table  or  comfortable-chair,  or  Sun- 
day-morning habit,  is  almost  universal,  every 
stratum  of  life  as  well  as  almost  every  mood 
of  human  nature  having  its  specially  provided 
columns  or  pages,  the  photogravures,  the  comic 
supplements,  the  " movies,"  the  cartoons,  the 
always  critical  and  never  ending  serial,  the 
reporter's  "stories,"  the  murders  adjoining  the 
Washington  news,  the  ex  parte  editorials,  and 
all  the  rest;  today,  when  business  and  leisure, 
political  parties  and  society  are  all  in  their  sev- 
eral ways  dependent  on  the  press,  today,  does 
the  press  occupy  a  position  of  real  respect?  It 
is  accepted.  It  is  quietly,  almost  insidiously, 
influential;  but  is  it  trusted!  Is  it  suspected 
of  high  purpose,  of  honesty  and  independence, 
of  devotion  to  truth  and  justice,  of  anything 
suggesting  moral  aggression  or  adventure  I  We 
have  to  answer,  not  indeed  sweepingly  and 
categorically,  since  there  are  exceptions,  but  on 
the  whole  negatively.  Certainly  it  is  not  a  Vic- 
torian enterprise.  Such  respected  or  at  least 
morally  and  intellectually  respectable  papers  as 
there  are  in  the  whole  country  can  probably 

[no] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

be  counted  on  one  hand.  Even  should  one  need 
one 's  full  quota  of  digits,  manual  and  pedal,  the 
case  would  still  be  disturbing.  Some  of  the 
papers,  too,  commonly  classed  as  respectable 
have  been  or  still  are  under  serious  charges, 
being  said  to  be  under  one  or  another  com- 
promising control  and  —  let  me  speak  cautiously 
-not  being  quite  clearly  not  so.  Our  papers 
we  must  have,  so  to  speak,  with  our  coffee ;  but, 
much  as  I  hate  to  suggest  it,  apparently 
"there's  a  reason "  why  we  should  at  least 
decaffeinate  the  coffee  if  not  openly  take  to 
postum  —  and  to  The  Christian  Science 
Monitor! 

It  is  truly  a  curious  situation  in  which  we 
now  are.  We  must  have  and  we  do  take  what 
on  the  whole  we  can  not  and  do  not  accept  with 
much  if  any  real  satisfaction  or  any  honest 
confidence.  It  is  a  situation  that  makes  one 
wonder  which  is  greater,  our  danger  or  the 
newspapers 's  neglected  opportunity.  I  have 
to  recall,  not  an  equivalent,  but  an  at  least 
analogous,  situation  of  some  centuries  ago.  In 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  the  church 

[in] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

was  a  great  need ;  never  in  its  whole  history  so 
great  a  need,  so  much  in  popular  demand,  so 
widely  accepted;  but  also  at  the  same  time  it 
was  a  great  scandal,  never  in  its  whole  history 
so  great  a  scandal,  immoral  from  its  head  down. 
The  Machiavellism  of  the  time  —  the  great 
Florentine  himself  lived  from  1469  to  1527- 
was  only  a  sort  of  temporal  or  secular  echo  of 
the  then  noisome  church.  Now  our  modern 
press  is  not  in  general  so  bad  as  to  need  to  be 
associated  very  closely  with  the  church  of  the 
days  of  Pope  Sixtus  IV  and  the  Borgias,  Alex- 
ander VI,  and  Machiavelli ;  but,  as  then  with  the 
church,  so  now  with  the  press  we  do  find  set  vis- 
a-vis great  danger,  already  realized  in  many 
offenses  and  disasters,  and  great  opportunity, 
not  yet  realized  as  it  should  be.  Of  the  oppor- 
tunity I  must  speak  in  due  time.  As  to  the 
danger  and  the  offense  I  would  certainly  not  exag- 
gerate these.  I  am  not  one  to  swallow  anything 
whole.  Sinclair's  The  Brass  Check,  for  exam- 
ple, which  we  do  not  hear  much  of  through  the 
newspapers,  I  have  read  and  I  have  to  take  very 
moderately;  the  author  himself  too  well  exem- 

[112] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

plifies  the  newspaper  atmosphere,  opposing  like 
with  like ;  *  but,  large  allowances  being  made, 
there  still  remains  a  case  that  can  not  be  met 
by  mere  denial  or  by,  what  is  always  suspicious, 
conspicuous  neglect.  Rose  Macaulay's  Potter- 
ism,  rich  with  satire  on  present  life  generally, 
as  well  as  on  the  press,  shows  the  same  case, 
albeit  at  a  different  angle.  The  great  Potter, 
eventually  made  "Lord  Pinkerton,"  is  head 
of  the  "Pinkerton  Press. "  Eesentment  and 
satire  aside,  however,  the  lack  of  general  posi- 
tive respect  —  respect  touched  with  enthusiasm 
-  for  the  press  can  not  be  smoke  without  some 
fire.  Fortunately,  when  a  needed  thing  needs 
reform,  reform  is  certain,  however  slowly  it 
may  sometimes  come ;  when  a  needed  thing,  like 
the  church,  like  the  press,  shows  defects,  its 
very  importance  saves  it;  its  faults,  too,  are 


*  See  review  of  The  Brass  Check  from  The  New  Statesman  (London, 
October  23,  1920),  reprinted  in  The  Living  Age  (Boston,  November 
4,  1920).  Says  the  reviewer,  after  reciting  Sinclair's  charges  of  a 
black-list  for  all  opponents  of  Big  Business,  of  an  incurable  habit  of 
perverting  words  and  actions  of  speakers  and  public  men,  of  domina- 
tion by  the  great  financial  and  industrial  interests:  "Certainly  it  is 
true  that  in  no  other  country  has  the  press  developed  so  satanic  an 
ingenuity  of  perversion,  so  extraordinary  a  facility  in  presenting  a 
man  as  a  fool  or  an  undesirable  [sometimes  an  offensive  autocrat?], 
in  making  him  say  or  imply  what  never  entered  his  mind."  Two 
contributory  reasons  are  mentioned:  The  American  view  that 
stenography  is  a  drawback  to  good  reporting,  and  the  assumption 
that  a  straight  report  of  a  meeting  or  interview  is  not  news,  not  a 
story,  in  the  American  sense. 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

even  likely  to  prove  possible  virtues ;  also  there 
will  be  actual  exceptions,  so  to  speak,  to  lead 
the  way;  but  just  now,  however  one-sidedly, 
our  attention  is  on  the  press's  defects.* 

I  have  no  intention  of  making  out  the  whole 
case  of  the  public  against  the  newspaper.  I 
shall  mention,  only  for  the  purpose  of  the  pres- 
ent discussion,  a  few  of  the  counts,  of  my  half- 
truths,  which,  however  fractional,  need  to  be 
faced.  Thus  there  is,  for  the  first,  the  aj.ver^ 
tising.  I  might  say  the  morally  uncensored,  un- 
"expuTgated  advertising;  but  not  there  lies  the 
point  I  would  stress,  although  there  lies  a  real 
point.  I  have  in  mind  the  not  uncommon  virtual 
control  of  the  advertising  or  the  advertisers 
over  the  news  and  editorial  departments.  Even 
our  college  paper,  The  Michigan  Daily,  it  is 
rumored,  not  very  long  ago  had  some  difficulty 
with  its  advertisers  because  of  its  interest  in 
a  patriotic  wear-your-old-clothes  campaign 
among  the  students!  Other  papers,  not  much 
farther  off,  could  possibly  confess  that  some- 
times the  reporter  or  the  editor  did  know  what 


*  For  a  very  recent  criticism  of  the  newspaper,  that  is  neither  ill- 
tempered  nor  otherwise  immoderate,  see  an  article:  Journalism,  Ethics 
and  Common  Sense,  by  Victor  S.  Yarros,  in  the  International  Journal 
of  Ethics,  Vol.  XXXli,  No.  4,  pp.  410-19. 

t«4] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

the  advertiser  wanted.  I  happen  to  know  in 
the  case  of  a  prominent,  widely  known  eastern 
daily,  of  definite  protests  and  threats  from  im- 
portant business  interests  against  reports  and 
editorials  about  certain  labor  agitations.  But 
elaboration  of  the  case  on  this  score  is  needless, 
and  what  I  have  chiefly  in  mind  is  a  virtual 
rather  than  an  open  and  conscious  control  by 
the  advertising.  The  fact  that  the  papers  seek 
large  circulations  to  tempt  the  advertisers  and 
that  the  advertisers  naturally  expect  their  inter- 
ests to  be  conserved  is  a  commonplace  of  mod- 
ern journalism,  easily  read  between  the  pages 
of  any  typical  daily  paper. 

I  turn  to  a  second  count.  Not  only  do  the 
advertisers  check  the  news  or  at  critical  points 
influence  the  policy,  so  prostituting  the  public 
press  to  private  or  at  least  to  conservative  and 
stand-pat  commercial  purposes,  but  also  for 
obvious  reasons  the  peculiar  mentality  of  adver- 
tising with  its  lure  and  its  stimulation  spreads 
inevitably  to  the  news  and  even  to  the  editorial 
pages.  A  paper  can  not  be  a  great  advertising 
medium  on  some  pages  and  avoid,  for  something 
mentally  better,  a  circulation-increasing 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

pruriency  and  sensationalism  on  other  pages.  In 
the  fullness  of  its  time  a  paper  in  all  its  sections 
tends  to  become  mentally  and  morally  homoge- 
neous. Its  reporters,  superior  to  stenography 
and  accuracy  in  general,  will  not  report  facts 
but  make  "stories."  Its  editors  will  write 
briefs,  not  critical  editorials. 

There  is,  thirdly,  the  peculiar  conservatism 
of  the  press.  This  undoubtedly  attaches  also 
to  the  commercial  and  financial  interests.  Busi- 
ness can  not  brook  change.  Let  the  issue  between 
progress  and  standingpat  be  clearly  drawn  and 
the  odds,  I  think,  are  strong  that  the  press  will 
follow  the  latter.  Changes  doubtless  must  come 
to  a  certain  degree,  within  certain  bounds,  and 
within  these  bounds  differences  may  be  openly 
and  safely  expressed;  but  the  wheels  of  indus- 
try and  business  and  of  the  established  order 
generally  must  not  be  stopped.  The  newspaper, 
then,  in  its  lines  and  between  them  will  be  essenj 
tially  conservative.  Progress  can  come  only 
through  the  people,  through  the  independent 
crowd,  or  through  a  leader,  ideally,  of  course, 
through  both,  and  a  conservative  press  may 
blind  the  people  with  organized  propaganda, 

[ii6J 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

the  now  accepted  name  for  social  and  political 
advertising  or  salesmanship,  and  may  obstruct 
or  destroy  leadership.  That  latterly  we  have 
been  living,  thanks  to  the  tremendous  circula- 
tions of  our  newspapers,  in  an  atmosphere  of 
prurient  advertising  and  pointed  propaganda, 
we  all  know  very  well. 

But  the  conservatism  of  the  general  press, 
says  somebody,  is  a  most  fortunate  thing.  I 
agree  that  a  certain  conservatism  is  most 
fortunate.  I  would  not  for  a  moment  prefer 
and  substitute  the  so-called  "radical  press. " 
The  trouble  with  the  press's  conservatism 
is  that  so  often  it  is  falsely  motivated  and 
that,  as  motivated,  it  involves  the  press 
in  a  sort  of  double  living.  Conserva- 
tive for  its  own  reasons  as  to  the  wheels  of 
industry,  conservative  in  not  ever  being  politi- 
cally or  industrially  seriously  radical  or  revo- 
lutionary, it  quite  spoils  whatever  virtue  there 
may  be  in  this  by  exploiting  the  lower  and 
violent  sides  of  human  nature,  by  commercial- 
izing in  its  own  news-mongering  way  murder, 
sex,  crime  misfortune.  Its  "human  stories " 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

are  seldom  any  credit  or  for  that  matter  any 
fair  evidence  of  human  nature.  Let  it  under- 
take to  idealize  human  nature  and  it  is  more 
extravagant  and  melodramatic  than  accurate. 
Simply,  the  newspaper's  conservatism  and  its 
peculiar  venal  sensationalism  go  together  and 
in  the  latter  lies  such  an  eventual  undoing  of 
the  former  as  might  give  pause  even  to  the 
reddest  of  the  reds. 

Here,  too,  I  may  mention  the  familiar  mis- 
representing when  not  actually  lying  headline. 
Writing  headlines  is  surely  a  fine  art,  the 
specific  art  of  making  facts  in  general  exciting 
and  of  making  specially  interesting  facts  serve 
some  partisan  purpose.  In  the  latter  respect 
many  a  paper  has  played  double,  reporting  on 
the  whole  accurately  in  the  text  but  duly  color- 
ing the  headlines.  Thus,  during  the  late  cam- 
paign a  certain  speaker,  known  to  be  for  the 
League  of  Nations,  said  that,  the  League  not 
supported  and  so  failing,  the  next  war  would 
be  soon  and  would  be  more  terrible  than  the 
recent  Great  War.  For  this  news  in  a  certain 
anti-League  paper  the  heading  was  in  sub- 
stance as  follows :  Well-known  Pro-League  Ora- 

[118] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

tor  Predicts  Another  Great  War  Soon!  To 
anything  but  most  casual  reading  the  para- 
graphs below  quite  belied  the  heading.  So, 
however,  at  least  in  the  headlines,  was  an  argu- 
ment for  the  League  turned  into  one  against  it, 
and  the  partisan  readers  could  be  trusted  not  to 
read  with  any  care,  if  at  all,  below  the  head- 
lines. Another  illustration :  Not  long  ago  I  sent 
a  communication  to  a  paper  of  different  political 
views  from  my  own.  The  letter  was  an  experi- 
ment. It  called  attention  to  a  certain  public 
man's  opportunism  and  inconsistencies,  quoting 
his  speeches  at  different  times.  I  wondered  if 
the  paper  would  publish  the  letter  and  face  the 
exposure.  It  did  publish  the  letter,  but  with 
saving  headlines,  and  I  have  to  add,  with  edi- 
torial omissions  of  essential  sentences,  so  that 
a  shifting  and  truth-careless  politician  was 
made  to  seem  a  patriot !  I  was,  of  course,  help- 
less. The  paper  had  a  right,  at  least  a  legal 
right,  so  long  as  newspapers  are  not  common 
carriers  or  public  servants,  not  to  publish  at 
all,  but  it  had  no  right  either  to  its  headlines 
or  to  the  editorial  changes.  The  two  cases  now 
given  only  tell  a  very  familiar  story.  The  head- 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

line  is  a  great  weapon  and  unbiased  important 
news  is  the  exception,  not  the  rule.  In  headlines 
propaganda  has  its  storm  troops. 

Besides  the  commercialism  of  the  press,  the 
mongering  mentality,  and  the  general  con- 
servatism, involving  duplicity  and,  when  also 
aggressively  partisan,  a  certain  habit  of  "fabri- 
cation," there  is  to  be  considered,  fourthly, 
among  my  half-truths,  the  defense,  the  only 
specious  defense,  often  given  for  publicity, 
especially  in  instances  where  privacy  has  been 
invaded.  The  public,  the  claim  is,  has  a  right 
to  know;  publicity  is  society's  great  safeguard; 
and,  under  this  claim,  the  newspaper  presumes 
upon  its  right  to  pry.  But  the  claim,  I  say, 
although  the  public  often  meets  the  prier  half- 
way, is  specious.  It  is  specious  on  two  counts : 
(1)  The  press  too  often  publishes  what  it  does 
publish  inaccurately,  shoddily,  sensationally, 
impertinently.  (2)  It  often  suppresses  what  the 
public  has  a  right  to  know.  It  is  not,  for  exam- 
ple, over-anxious,  having  made  mistakes  of  mis- 
representation or  of  injustice,  to  give  the  same 
publicity,  if  any  publicity,  to  corrections.  But, 
still  more  seriously,  often  it  will  not  advocate 

[120] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

reforms  of  real  public  need,  such  as  those  for 
purer  milk  or  for  purer  i  'movies,  "if  —  as  some- 
time happens  —  dairy  companies  or  theaters 
call  for  the  soft  pedal.  Such  selective  sensa- 
tionalism, I  submit,  is  not  an  honest  and  safe- 
guarding publicity. 

Related  to  this  defense  of  publicity,  or  implied 
in  it,  is  the  notion  that  a  newspaper  must  give 
the  public  what  it  wants.  This  also  has  a 
specious  value,  unless  the  newspaper  is  to  be 
only  the  publiq's  creature.  But  under  it  what 
do  the  papers  do?  They,  proceed  to  catch  the 
public  more  or  less  off  its  guard,  either  at  its 
partisan  blindness,  irresponsibility,  and  selfish 
interest  or  at  its  general  state  of  leisure  and 
relaxation  when  control  is  lacking  and  mind 
and  morals  alike  are  lax.  If  under  these  cir- 
cumstances the  public  were  getting  what  it 
really  wanted,  the  newspaper  would  really  be 
respected  for  its  mentality  and  its  morality,  as 
today  it  certainly  is  not  or  is  only  exceptionally. 
The  press,  of  course,  is  a  great  power.  It  is  so 
recognized.  The  quick  and  effective  publicity 
that  it  provides  is  a  very  great  force  and  is  so 
appreciated.  But,  again,  there  is  no  genuine, 

[121] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

warm  respect.  The  public  somehow  is  not  get- 
ting what  it  really  wants.  Exciting  exposure 
is  not  appropriate  and  useful  candor.  What  men 
will  take  in  conditions  of  relaxation  is  not  what 
they  most  want.  Nor  am  I  now  speaking  only 
for  doctrinaires,  idealists,  college  professors, 
highbrows  generally.  Were  it  not  altogether 
too  likely  that  many  a  reporter  would  avidly 
seize  upon  the  remark  as  almost,  if  not  quite, 
one  of  the  chief  messages  of  my  present  dis- 
cussion and  give  it  special  emphasis,  a  headline 
or  bold-faced  caption,  I  would  go  on  and  say 
that  intellectual  and  cultural  and  moral  pro- 
fessors have  sometimes  affected  lowbrow,  relax- 
ing, and  even  somewhat  vulgar  movies  or  vaude- 
villes and  read  first,  not  last,  the  corresponding 
features  of  the  newspapers;  but,  for  safety,  I 
refrain,  really  remarking  only  that  the  general 
public,  however  lowbrow  and  uncultured,  would 
not  seek  what  on  casual  opportunity,  the  day's 
work  done,  it  would  read  and  be  diverted  by. 
A  fifth  difficulty  with  the  newspaper,  discour- 
aging to  anyone  looking  for  a  newspaper 
conscience,  is  its  control  by  the  crowd  mind.  Con- 
science, somehow,  whatever  else  any  definition 

[122] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

of  it  may  require,  needs  a  responsible,  indi- 
vidual person.  Newspapers,  however,  as  a  rule 
are  not  now  edited  by  individuals  in  any  condi- 
tion of  independence  and  personal  responsibil- 
ity. In  varying  ways  and  degrees  the  positions 
of  editors  are  like  that  of  a  young  friend  of 
mine  in  the  recent  campaign,  ardently  thinking 
on  one  side  and  successfully  editing  his  paper 
on  the  other.  Add  to  this  factor  in  the  work  of 
newspaper  editing  today  the  general  conserva- 
tism, political  or  commercial,  and  the  supple- 
mental, aggressive  partisanship,  and  what  I 
mean  by  the  control  of  the  crowd  mind  must 
be  clear.  Editor  or  reporter  in  his  mental  states 
and  movements  is  made  very  largely  the  crea- 
ture of  ideas,  judgements,  purposes,  that  are 
more  atmospheric  than  personally  his  own,  the 
suggestions  of  the  organization  in  which  he 
finds  himself  rather  than  the  results  of  his  own 
candid  experience  and  independent  thinking. 
Do  but  reflect,  too,  on  the  mass  of  syndicated 
matter,  and  on  the  large  supply  of  prepared 
and  generously  circulated  propaganda  coming 
from  all  well-ordered  and  organized  depart- 
ments of  life  that  have  learned  to  take  care  of 

[123] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

the  publicity  end.  The  wonder  is  if  the  modern 
editor  has  to  do  anything  but  think  administra- 
tively, that  is,  of,  for,  and  by  others.  For  my 
meaning  it  is  not  necessary  that  all  editors  be 
in  the  extreme  plight  of  my  young  friend 
already  mentioned.  It  suffices  that  all  the  condi- 
tions are  calculated  to  develop  for  newspapers 
automatic  thinking  instead  of  independent 
thinking.  Moreover,  now  to  recall  an  earlier 
allusion,  if  partisanship  ever  come,  as  in  recent 
years,  to  run  high,  if  reactionary  forces  and  an 
alarmed  conservatism  become  very  assertive, 
the  mentality  of  the  press,  as  of  the  reading 
public,  will  even  fall  to  the  level  of  the  ouija 
board  and  things  like  it.  I  mean  that  a  mental 
automatism  with  its  release  of  the  morbid  and 
sensational  subconscious  and  its  reactions  to  the 
atmospheric,  its  proneness  to  unreason  and 
strong  passions,  and  above  all  to  suspecting  or 
even,  as  the  phrase  goes,  to  actually  "seeing 
things, "  will  become  general.  The  press  of 
recent  times,  I  submit,  has  "  communicated " 
a  great  deal  to  a  too  ready  public.  "Automatic 
writing"  has  not  remained  the  special  privilege 
of  a  few  select  spirits. 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

But,  as  the  last  count,  there  is  what  is  possibly 
only  a  corollary  of  much  that  has  already  been 
said.  I  mean  the  newspaper 's  bias  for  the  nor- 
mal and  aversion  to  the  individual.  Already  I 
have  had  occasion  to  say  that  progress  can 
come  only  through  the  people  and  a  leader,  and 
that  a  naturally  conservative  press,  catching 
the  people  off  guard,  by  an  organized  propa- 
ganda may  blind  the  people  and  obstruct  real 
leadership.  The  press's  natural  reaction  to 
individuality  is  hostility.  Not  even  conceding 
individuality  to  its  own  staff,  why  should  it 
countenance  this  in  others  1  Why  not  even  resent 
it  in  others  f  Certain  it  is  that  the  press  has  shown 
a  special  disposition  even  to  persecute  individu- 
ality, exploiting  it  sensationally,  humorously, 
derisively,  and  using  it  as  a  foil  for  exalting 
the  normal  and  conventional  and  common- 
place. I  wonder  if  here  is  not  one  of  the  worst 
dangers  of  the  newspaper  today.  The  success- 
ful, socialized  individual,  great  for  his  accumu- 
lation, conventionally  large  and  proportionally 
prominent,  gets  attention  and  acclaim ;  but  indi- 
viduality by  quality  and  originality,  by  courage 
and  adventure,  individuality  of  the  sort  that, 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

being  vital  rather  than  just  formally  prominent, 
is  quick  with  possible  leadership,  commonly  gets 
neglect  or,  if  attention,  then  ridiculous  exposure. 
Of  course  democracy  has  its  eccentrics,  its 
cranks,  and  fools,  as  kings  and  their  courts  used 
to,  and  to  give  the  fools  and  their  follies  pub- 
licity is  entertaining  and  often  may  be  useful; 
but  also  democracy  can  ill  afford  to  take  very 
large  chances  of  treating  its  real  individuals 
as  fools  or  worse  than  fools,  even  as  real  male- 
factors, to  be  exposed  to  the  laughter  and  abuse 
of  the  common,  paying  crowd.  The  paying 
crowd,  I  suppose,  is  democracy's  court. 

All  of  which  seems  to  be  suggesting  that  the 
press  is,  or  is  taking  large  chances  of  being, 
falsely  democratic,  exalting  the  accumulating 
individual,  the  merely  big  exponent  of  what  all, 
loyal  to  the  prevailing  order,  generally  are,  but 
disparaging  when  not  actually  persecuting  the 
individual  of  courage  and  actual  leadership 
who  may,  of  course,  literally  or  figuratively,  in 
the  obvious,  narrow  sense  or  more  generally, 
depress  the  market.  The  sure  end  of  such  false 
democracy  is  tyranny.  A  democracy  that  does 
not  foster  real  leadership  and  the  aristocracy 

[126] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

of  it  is  only  riding  to  its  own  undoing.  It  is 
rather  a  strange  condition  of  affairs  that  the 
press  today  should  cry  so  loud,  in  the  interest 
of  democracy,  for  its  own  freedom.  Is  it  really 
willing  to  be  free?  Is  it  quite  ready  to  serve 
a  real  instead  of  a  formal  and  only  apparent 
democracy! 

In  summary,  the  case  of  the  people  against 
the  press,  as  I  have  tried  to  work  it  out,  now 
has  these  chief  counts :  commercialism,  the  men- 
tality of  salesmanship,  a  virtual  and  falsely 
motivated  conservatism,  a  biased  and  selective 
publicity,  control  by  the  crowd  mind  with  strong 
tendencies  toward  ' '  automatism  "  and  its  occult 
1 '  communications, '  V  and  a  too  ready  contempt 
for  active  individuality  and  real  or  possible 
leadership.  That  these  six  counts  cross  each 
other  more  or  less  does  not  matter.  They  may 
all  reduce  to  one,  a  conservative  commercialism. 
Certainly  I  have  no  reverence  for  the  number 
six.  But,  six  or  one,  they  do  not  make  clear 
the  existence  of  a  newspaper  conscience.  On  the 
contrary,  as  here  presented,  they  must  have 
suggested  the  non-existence.  Still,  we  have 
not  yet  got  our  definition. 

[127] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

With  a  prudence,  born  fortunately  of  most 
honest  conviction,  I  have  called  this  discourse 
a  "  study  in  half  -truths. "  Studies  in  whole 
truths  belong  in  the  field  of  mathematics  or  pure 
science.  Vital  human  affairs  can  not  be  dis- 
cussed in  any  but  half-truths.  Perhaps  you 
have  not  realized  this  before;  many  do  fail  to 
realize  it;  but  in  any  discussion  of  intimately 
human  affairs  one  has  no  choice  but  to  write 
or  talk  pro  or  con  and  to  be  only  partially  right 
on  either  side.  Nothing  human  can  be  wholly 
bad  or  wholly  good.  Money,  law,  self,  sex, 
adventure  are  all  examples  of  this.  Always  in 
each  one  are  closely  met,  are  set  vis-a-vis,  the 
good  and  the  bad.  Each,  however  dangerous  or 
vicious,  has  actively  possible  worth.  In  sex 
are  met  the  brothel  and  the  home ;  in  adventure 
and  its  uncertainties,  the  gambler  and  the 
martyr.  The  newspaper,  intimately  a  human 
affair,  in  its  various  characters  is  no  exception 
to  the  rule.  Those  six  counts  against  it,  as  now 
to  be  admitted,  are  only  so  many  half-truths; 
only  so  many  charges,  in  other  words,  that 
might  be  the  counts  of  the  defense.  Do  I  say 
" might  be"?  I  am  ready  to  predict  that  the 

[128] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

counsel  for  the  press  will  reply  to  me,  if  find- 
ing reply  necessary,  by  urging  ideal  possibilities 
in  every  fault  I  have  thought  to  expose.  The 
press,  we  shall  be  reminded,  ought  to  be  con- 
servative. It  ought  to  be,  if  not  commercial, 
at  least  practical,  pragmatic.  It  ought  to  pub- 
lish and  even  boldly  expose  life  and  human 
nature.  Is  not  publicity,  like  confession,  good 
for  real  life  ?  The  press,  again,  ought  to  reflect, 
even  at  some  risk  of  a  certain  automatism,  the 
general  mind,  not  every  editor's  or  reporter's 
or  any  chance  individual's  ideas.  In  the  press, 
then,  as  in  those  other  affairs  of  human  life, 
are  met  at  least  potentially  unideal  and  ideal, 
corrupt  or  corrupting  and  beneficent  expres- 
sions of  the  things  of  which  we  have  found  the 
newspaper  to  be  made. 

Evidently,  as  an  interesting  conclusion,  the 
various  dangers  and  faults  of  modern  journal- 
ism are  not  things  to  be  dealt  with  just  surgi- 
cally. They  themselves  offer  actual  resources 
or  opportunities  to  be  realized.  They  are  forces 
that  should  not  be  allowed. to  have  their  way 
but  should  rather  be  made  mediate  and  service- 
able to  the  life  of  society,  serving  what  an  active 

[129] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

and  progressing  social  life,  not  what  a  relaxed 
or  inert  life,  wants.    In  certain  industries  and 
businesses,  for  example,  a  narrow  commercial 
spirit  has  become  enlightened  and  has  given 
place  to  a  more  profitable  but  also  philanthropic 
pragmatism,  and  the  time  must  come  when  the 
generally  narrow,  conservative  commercialism 
of  the  newspaper  will  realize  that  in  news,  in 
editorials,  or  in  advertising,  a  sober  honesty  in 
the  long  run  makes  more  money,  insures  more 
social  and  political  stability,  and  mediates  fuller 
life.     Partisanship,  again,  will  find  that  fair 
play  and  the  sportsmanship  of  it  are  the  most 
successful  politics,  giving  up,  for  being  both 
mean  and  unwise,  what  has  been  called  political 
sabotage.    Publicity  will  become,  not  morbidly 
sensational  and  mongering,  not  biased  and  dis- 
honest, but  objective,  sane,  balanced,  purposed 
to  society's  good,  not  to  society's  mere  excite- 
ment and  harm,  not  to  idle  entertainment  of 
the  curious  or  itching,  nor  yet  to  mere  exposure 
or  ridicule  or  abuse  of  anybody,  above  all  not 
to  the  exploitation  of  crime  and  violence  gener- 
ally for  the  sake  of  circulation.    Some  legisla- 
tion, possibly,  would  help  to  bring  such  desirable 

[130] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

changes,  but,  while  legislation,  say  by  declaring 
the  newspaper  a  common  carrier  or  a  public 
utility  or  some  combination  of  these,  might 
hasten  such  changes,  it  could  not  really  inaugu- 
rate them.  Any  effective  legislation  would  only 
be  a  sign  that  the  press  itself  was  beginning 
to  find  itself,  to  come  more  ideally  than  hereto- 
fore into  its  own. 

The  press  has  been  something  of  a  prodigal. 
It  has  run  wild  mentally  and  morally.  Like  so 
much  in  our  American  life,  it  has  grown  very 
rapidly  to  enormous  proportions  and  amazing 
power  and  it  is  still  uncontrolled  by  any  clear 
appreciation  of  itself.  It  has  yet  fully  to  realize 
its  true  place  and  work  and  its  faults  and  dan- 
gers are  the  result.  It  is  still  more  a  creature 
of  the  times  than  an  informed  purpose.  So  to 
speak,  its  mind  and  its  heart  have  not  kept  pace 
with  its  body.  Nevertheless  its  condition  can 
not  last.  I  am  of  opinion  that  important  changes 
are  not  far  off.  Eef orm  came,  it  may  be  remem- 
bered, to  the  sixteenth-century  church  that  was 
at  once  so  bad  and  so  necessary.  Luther,  I 
like  to  remember,  was  a  contemporary  of 
Machiavelli. 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

A  newspaper  conscience?  I  had  almost  for- 
gotten my  quarry.  I  submit  that  if  —  forgetting 
I  had  forestalled  them  —  the  newspaper  men 
should  rise  jealously  to  defend  the  press  against 
my  charges,  reminding  me  that  at  most  I  was 
telling  only  half-truths,  they  would  be  giving 
conclusive  evidence  of  an  actual  newspaper 
conscience.  I  should  feel  that  I  could  trust  the 
press  in  their  hands.  In  justifying  it  they  would 
have  to  idealize  it.  They  would  have  to  discover 
with  some  clearness  possible  worth  and  service 
even  in  the  present  faults;  admitting  my 
charges,  however  only  semitrue,  but  translating 
the  very  offenses  into  possible  and  desirable  vir- 
tues. Moreover,  probably  every  newspaper  in 
the  country  can  show  many,  oft  repeated  good 
works,  advocacy  of  important  reforms,  gener- 
ous assistance  in  "drives,"  charities,  public 
benefits  of  all  sorts;  and  these  and  other  "good 
works,"  although  possibly  more  "in  the  day's 
work"  than  vigorously,  progressively  conscien- 
tious, do  afford  a  basis  for  confidence  in  the 
press  and  its  future.  Conscience  I  should  define 
\  as  intelligence  about  self  and  the  life  in  which  j 
»  one  finds  one 's  self  with  an  accompanying  sense  1 

[132] 


The  Newspaper  Conscience 

of  obligation  to  realize  recognized  desirable  pos- 
sibilities. With  some  papers,  their  number 
probably  growing  steadily,  already  actively  and 
conscientiously  awake,  with  press  clubs  and 
their  many  conferences,  with  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  journalists,  making  journalism  one  of 
the  new  learned  professions,  I  think  we  need 
have  little  fear  for  a  vigorous  newspaper  con- 
science becoming  general  instead  of  exceptional. 
Conscientious  journalism  can  be  only  en- 
lightened journalism  touched  with  obligation 
and  determination  and  so  turning  very  serious 
faults  into  real  virtues. 


IV.    AGES  OF  LEISURE 

IN  THESE  days  when  economists  and  edu- 
cators and  the  humanly  and  socially  inter- 
ested generally  in  their  several  and  different 
ways  are  putting  emphasis  on  technical  skill,  on 
professional  and  occupational  efficiency,  when 
work  and  its  productivity  are  being  put  forward 
as  the  important  problems  of  the  hour,  when 
the  country  is  restless  over  every  sign  of  un- 
employment and  the  common  wish  seems  to  be 
to  see  every  wheel  turning  and  everybody  busy, 
in  these  days  it  is  well  to  reflect  that  at  least 
of  equal  importance  with  the  great  problem  of 
work  there  is,  pressing  for  a  reckoning  and 
obtrusively  obvious  to  those  who  will  open  their 
eyes  or  do  not  insist  on  closing  them,  the  prob- 
lem of  leisure.  True,  some  are  already  feeling 
keenly  the  importance  of  this  problem,  among 
them  the  two  authors*  of  the  recent  articles  in 


*  Arthur  C.  Pound  and  Ernest  Lloyd.  The  articles  appeared  under 
Mr.  Pound's  name,  but  Mr.  Pound  has  explained  the  double  author- 
ship in  The  Atlantic  for  December,  1921.  He  has  also  published  the 
articles  in  a  book.  The  Iron  Man  of  Industry:  Boston,  1922.  Mr. 
Lloyd  will  soon  publish  a  book :  The  Wages  System. 

[134] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

The  Atlantic  Monthly  on  the  Iron  Man;  but 
the  general  public,  including  many  who  read 
and  think,  is  still  in  need  of  being  aroused.  Its 
eyes  may  be  opening;  but,  in  spite  of  the  great 
lessons  of  the  war,  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  be 
really  awake  and  alert.  Is  real  efficiency  to  be 
judged  only  by  visible  or  ponderable  results? 
Is  life  only  instrumentation  and  manufacture! 
Is  education  only  an  affair  of  methods  and  tests 
and  professional  self-consciousness?  Is  Eco- 
nomics, theoretical  or  practical,  only  for  main- 
tenance of  a  status  quo  and  large  expansion  or 
accumulation  in  kind?  Above  all,  if  the  signs 
or  promises  of  new  leisure  and  more  leisure  are 
all  that  they  appear,  is  nothing  to  be  done? 
Is  the  opportunity  to  be  lost? 

Unfortunately  leisure  is  not  always,  perhaps 
not  commonly,  thought  of  in  positive  terms. 
Far  too  often  it  is  regarded  only  as  cessation 
from  work.  Thus  it  is  not  just  " impractical' ' 
but  also  idle  and  futile;  it  "butters  no  bread" 
and  even  affords  no  spiritual  pabulum;  it 
means  only  rest,  careless  diversion,  often  slum- 
ber. As  to  making  any  direct  and  positive 

L'35] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

contribution  to  life  and  growth  it  is  too  often  not 
valued  in  this  way. 

Yet  leisure,  insignificant  though  it  may  seem 
to  many  except  as  an  opportunity  for  rest  and 
recuperation  in  "practical"  living,  in  the  eon- 
ventional  life  that  would  simply  maintain  or 
at  most,  if  seeking  change,  would  only  expand 
its  normal  self,  is  in  actual  fact  of  most  vital 
importance.  It  is  quite  indispensable  to  a  life 
that  has  any  quality  of  adventure  and  requires 
imagination,  invention  and  real  growth.  What, 
do  you  ask,  may  be  its  part  in  a  life  of  this 
sort  ?  Leisure 's  contribution  to  an  adventurous 
and  growing  life  —  the  only  life  worth  while  — 
can  probably  be  seen  best  by  consideration  of 
what,  as  I  would  submit,  are  the  three  great 
ages  of  leisure  in  human  evolution.  A  pity  it 
is  to  use  so  cumbersome  a  phrase  of  so  light  a 
theme.  Leisure,  however,  carries  no  light  bur- 
den and  in  evidence  I  would  now  ask  attention 
to  each  of  the  three  ages,  or  eras,  in  order. 
Moreover,  while  leisure  is  always  a  factor  of 
value,  actual  or  possible,  for  the  individual  and 
while  its  value  to  the  individual  can  not  be 
separated  from  its  value  racially  and  histori- 

[136] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

cally,  my  present  interest  is  the  broader  one; 
in  ages  or  eras,  not  hours  or  days,  of  leisure; 
and,  because  each  age  of  leisure  will  be  found  to 
have  its  own  peculiar  instrumentation,  its 
special  machinery  of  production  and  mainten- 
ance, my  interest  is  also  in  life 's  different  forms 
of  instrumentation.  To  understand  leisure  it 
is  always  necessary  to  know  what  enables  or 
supports  it. 

Evolutionists  from  Anaximander  of  the  sixth 
century  before  Christ  to  John  Fiske  twenty-five 
centuries  later  have  dwelt  now  and  again  and 
with  more  or  less  knowledge  and  appreciation 
on  the  importance  of  a  prolonged  infancy  in  the 
human  race.  To  his  long  infancy  and  the  leis- 
ure of  it  man  has  been  said  to  owe  his  superior- 
ity to  the  other  animals.  This  statement  of 
course  hardly  affords  a  complete  explanation 
of  man's  position;  but,  however  incomplete  and 
made  from  whatever  confusing  slant,  it  is 
weighty  with  truth.  Also,  although  referring 
primarily  only  to  the  human  infant's  long  per- 
iod of  suckling  and  physical  dependence,  it  may 
be  so  extended  as  to  apply  to  the  whole  of  youth, 

[137] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

certainly  to  the  period  before  sexual  maturity 
and  even  to  the  still  longer  period  before  the 
close  of  what  is  ordinarily  considered  prepara- 
tion and  education  for  real  life.  Racially  and 
individually  the  value  of  this  prolonged  time 
of  mental  and  physical  leisure,  with  its  oppor- 
tunity for  the  play  —  not  always  as  playful  as  it 
appears — of  childhood  and  youth,  for  strength- 
ening the  sentiments  and  associations  of  the 
home,  for  the  preparatory  education,  whether 
of  the  more  formal  and  deliberate  sort  or  of  the 
sort,  not  less  important,  that  is  informal  and 
natural,  would  be  very  hard  to  overstate.  In 
time  of  such  leisure  man  has  not  merely  rested 
from  his  labors ;  also  he  has  acquired  experience 
and  vision,  ideas  and  ideals.  In  the  youth  of 
particular  individuals  obviously  there  is  hardly 
any  labor  to  rest  from,  but  racially  youth  does 
afford  opportunity  for  recuperation  and  always, 
mark  now  of  its  more  positive  value,  it  brings 
the  experience  that  prompts  enterprise  and  in- 
vention. The  leisure  of  man 's  youth,  made  pos- 
sible of  course  by  the  family  as  an  institution, 
by  the  school  and  by  domestic  and  social  cus- 
toms and  laws  of  all  sorts,  is  the  great  source 


Ages  of  Leisure 

of    his    idealism,    inviting    growth,    inspiring 
change  in  kind  or  quality. 

All  of  which,  now  that  I  have  written  it 
down,  seems  so  simple  that  it  can  hardly  have 
needed  to  be  said.  In  the  contributions  of 
leisured  youth  to  life  and  growth  we  merely 
have  one  of  those  truths  that  all  can  recognize 
and  that  many  have  liked  to  dwell  upon.  In 
fact  sometimes  we  discourse  together  about  the 
weather  and  could  not  really  get  along  without 
the  weather  in  our  conversation.  Sometimes, 
our  mood  more  serious,  we  sound  deeper  com- 
monplaces of  life  and  consider,  as  here  and  now, 
the  leisure  and  idealism  of  youth  and,  although 
too  often  our  thought  may  be  of  the  carelessness 
of  youth,  we  are  agreed  that  without  youth  and 
its  leisure>life  would  have  little  interest.  Are 
we  ourselves  mature  and  old!  We  would  be- 
come young  again.  Of  youth,  too,  of  prolonged 
infancy,  as  of  other  ages,  it  is  well  to  remember 
that,  whatever  its  value  in  the  past,  when  man 
first  began  to  outstrip  other  animals,  it  consti- 
tutes now  a  heritage  enjoyed  in  important 
measure  and  more  or  less  productively  em- 
ployed by  every  human  being  that  is  born. 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

But,  pleasant  as  it  always  is  to  discourse 
about  the  leisure  of  youth  and  its  value  for 
human  evolution,  in  what  I  have  set  out  to  say 
in  this  essay  my  primary  interest  is  not  in 
youth,  past  or  present,  as  an  age  of  leisure.  Two 
other  ages  of  leisure,  also  when  understood  and 
appreciated  positive  in  their  value,  are  interest- 
ing me  much  more.  Both  of  these  will  be  found 
to  have  many  of  the  marks  of  youth,  freshness, 
adventure,  vision;  but  the  specific  leisure  of 
human  infancy  and  youth  has  been  mentioned 
here  and  first  discussed  only  for  definition  or 
illustration  of  leisure  itself  as  something  more 
than  cessation  from  work. 

So  I  turn  to  a  second  age  of  leisure,  which 
although  quite  different  in  the  underlying  con- 
ditions will  show  the  same  general  character  or 
function  in  history.  Thus  man  has  owed  much 
to  the  leisure  that  has  come  to  him  through 
slavery  in  one  or  another  of  its  forms.  Ancient 
civilizations  in  particular,  perhaps  most  not- 
ably that  of  the  Greeks,  who  proved  themselves 
in  remarkable  degree  equal  to  their  opportunity, 
seem  to  have  owed  their  culture,  their  art  and 
science  and  philosophy,  to  their  slaves.  Slaves 

[140] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

belonged  to  the  Greek  family  almost  if  not  quite 
as  naturally  as  parents  and  children.  Even 
Aristotle  found  it  difficult  to  think  of  the  unity 
of  the  family  without  inclusion  of  the  slaves. 
For  that  matter  some  householders  or  at  least 
some  house-wives  still  extant  might  be  sus- 
pected of  being  orthodox  Aristotelians  in  this 
respect.  Apart  from  domestic  life,  too,  depen- 
dence for  leisure  and  its  opportunities  on  a 
servile  class  is  by  no  means  a  matter  merely  of 
antiquity.  To  speak  broadly,  in  home  life  and 
in  public  economy,  in  time  of  peace  and  in  time 
of  war,  from  ancient  times  even  down  to  the 
present  day  there  has  been  some  dependence 
on  human  beings  in  some  condition  of  service, 
on  slaves  or  on  a  well-defined  and  virtually  in- 
stitutional serving  class  or,  war  coming,  on  an 
army.  Such  service  has  brought  important 
leisure  and  the  leisure,  while  not  the  direct 
source  or  cause  of  culture,  has  provided  the 
opportunity,  both  making  a  public  for  it  and 
providing  many  of  its  active  and  leading 
exponents. 

Well  do  I  remember  the  shock  I  had  when 
hearing  years  ago  from  one  of  my  teachers 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

that  slavery,  which  I  had  been  taught  to 
hate  with  a  hate  still  colored  by  stories 
and  issues  of  the  Civil  War,  had  made  pos- 
sible the  Greek  free  citizenship  and  so,  as 
the  Greeks  seized  the  opportunity,  the  bril- 
liant Greek  civic  life  and  the  Greek  cul- 
ture long  regarded  and  even  now  regarded 
among  the  greatest  gifts  of  history  to  civiliza- 
tion. How  could  such  flowers  have  sprung  from 
and  been  in  any  sense  dependent  upon  so  offen- 
sive a  thing  as  human  slavery!  At  the  same 
time,  if  my  memory  be  not  at  fault,  I  learned 
that  the  Greek  word  for  scholarship  was  in  its 
origin  associated  with  or  even  identical  with 
a  word  meaning  leisure.  Our  English  word, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  comes  from  the  Greek 
<r^o\^.  Our  schools  are  places  of  leisure, 
leisure  for  scholarship.  But,  not  to  pause  for 
the  wit  and  humor  which  just  here  with  the 
thoughts  of  our  own  leisured  students  it  is  hard 
to  get  by,  from  that  day,  I  suspect,  my  views  of 
life  lost  some  of  their  simplicity  and  took  on  a 
new  quality,  turning  more  sophisticated  and 
more  patient  with  the  complexities,  the  ironies 
and  the  paradoxes,  of  life.  Too  clearly  some- 

[142] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

thing  good  and  true  and  beautiful  had  somehow 
owed  its  rise  to  what  seemed  wholly  bad  and 
false  and  ugly.  There  can  be  no  notable  gain, 
I  had  to  conclude,  without  serious  cost,  even 
human  sacrifice.  This  truth  doubtless  seemed 
harder  to  me  then  than  it  does  now.  Then  it  did 
come  as  a  great  shock.  I  was  able,  or  have 
since  been  able,  to  understand  even  human  sac- 
rifice as  a  religious  rite. 

Yes,  for  centuries  —  who  can  tell  the  number 
of  them  or  who  can  say  that  their  count  is 
finished? —  slaves  or  servants,  making  a  "lower 
class "  except  possibly  as  soldiers  in  time  of 
war,  have  been  an  enabling  condition  of  leisured 
prosperity  and  civilization.  In  time  of  war  ser- 
vile man  has  been  lifted  to  the  dignity  of  the 
soldier;  pomp  and  circumstance  and  martial 
music  have  imparted  a  certain  glory  to  his  ser- 
vile state  and  for  the  time  being  social  differ- 
ences have  very  generally  disappeared;  but  only 
the  exigencies  of  war  and  the  common  danger 
can  account  for  the  levelling,  if  levelling  there 
really  be.  Levelling  with  reservations  it  has 
often  seemed  to  me  and,  be  the  cloud  or  glory 
of  the  military  life  what  it  may,  the  general 

[143] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

situation  is  the  same  in  war  as  in  peace :  depend- 
ence of  social  and  political  life,  of  its  safety 
and  leisure  and  possible  progress  on  a  serving 
if  not  always  openly  servile  class.  Moreover, 
that  successful  war  in  the  old  days  yielded 
slaves  as  part  of  the  spoils  and  in  our  own  time, 
being  not  yet  without  its  peculiar  notions  of 
victory  and  vengeance,  would  make  the  de- 
feated enemy  servile,  only  emphasizes  what  I 
have  been  saying  about  the  second  age  of 
leisure. 

In  general,  then,  this  second  age  is  the  age  of 
the  brunt  of  life  being  borne  by  a  serving  class 
domestically,  in  public  economy  and  politically 
and  of  the  quality  and  the  understanding  of  life, 
the  conscious  purpose  and  the  direction,  being 
determined  and  developed  by  an  upper  leisured 
class.  It  is  true  that  " brunt "  and  "quality" 
are  at  best  only  relative  terms,  that  leisure,  for 
example,  has  its  own  brunt,  its  own  hardship, 
and  servile  labor  has  its  own  quality,  say  its 
own  leisured  irresponsibility;  but  any  antithesis 
of  life  has  to  stand  qualification  and  this  of 
brunt  and  quality,  servile  labor  and  leisure, 
both  is  no  exception  to  the  rule  and  still  holds 

[144] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

large    meaning,    its    meaning    even    enhanced 
rather  than  diminished  by  the  complication. 

Also,  still  with  regard  to  the  second  age  of 
leisure,  on  the  whole  up  to  the  present  time,  as 
history  has  commonly  been  read,  our  civiliza- 
tion has  for  centuries  been  in  this  age.  Signs 
of  change,  involving  significant  modification, 
have  been  in  evidence  for  some  time  and  the  age 
itself  has  really  had  its  own  divisions  or  periods, 
as  my  rather  indiscriminate  illustrations  of  it 
may  have  suggested.  There  have  been  at  least 
two  different  periods,  one  in  important  ways 
different  from  the  other:  a  period  of  domestic 
slavery  and  a  period  of  institutional  constraint, 
membership  in  a  lower  and  servile  class  being 
different  from  and  certainly  some  advance  on 
slavery  as  such.  But,  in  general,  under  a  sys- 
tem which  has  now  to  seem  to  us,  as  we  look 
back  and  reflect,  to  have  been  very  costly, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  heights  attained, 
our  civilization  has  spent  or  exploited  a  good 
many  human  beings.  While  I  have  no  taste  for 
extravagance  of  speech  and  specially  would 
avoid  sensational  metaphor,  I  have  to  confess 
to  discovering  in  it  all  even  in  the  institutional 

[H5] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

bondage  of  the  second  period  a  certain  likeness 
to  cannibalism.  Man  is  seen  to  use  himself  for 
his  own  vital  purposes.  True,  even  cannibal- 
ism, like  other  forms  of  human  sacrifice,  has  had 
its  religious  sanction;  but  religions  as  well  as 
customs  and  institutions  come  and  go. 

Besides  the  cost  in  servile,  more  or  less  sub- 
merged human  beings  there  has  been  also  large 
cost  of  a  different  sort,  resulting  quite  directly 
from  the  leisure  that  the  service  affords.  In 
any  age  leisure  has  its  own  intimate  dangers. 
A  leisured  class  is  not  wholly  on  the  profit  side. 
Thus,  as  the  history  of  civilization  has  again 
and  again  revealed,  leisure  breeds  license  and 
the  consequences  of  license.  A  leisured  and 
more  or  less  cultured  class  will  always  have  its 
two  groups:  those  whose  freedom  is  dissipation, 
extravagance  of  one  kind  or  another  and  poten- 
tial if  not  eventual  degeneracy  and  those  who, 
being  free,  enter  upon  productive  thought  and 
conduct  and  so  achieve  something  at  least,  as 
must  be  hoped,  to  balance  the  losses  of  the 
others.  All  is  not  gain,  then,  that  is  brilliantly 
leisured.  Yet  real  progress,  impossible  without 
the  opportunities  of  leisure,  simply  has  to  bear 

[146] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

the  expense  of  license  and  its  dissipation  as  well 
as  that  of  man's  self-consumption  or  self- 
exploitation.  Even  infancy  and  youth,  impor- 
tant as  we  see  them,  show  a  startling  mortality 
and  much  disaster,  physical  and  moral,  from 
their  inexperience,  impulsiveness,  indiscretion. 
It  is  true,  as  to  the  second  age,  that  possibly 
off-setting  that  expense  of  self-consumption 
there  is  a  certain  ideal  value  in  the  very  service 
of  men  to  men.  In  war,  of  course,  the  relation 
is  capitalized:  The  Service.  There  may  be,  too, 
some  compensation  for  the  costly  license  and 
dissipation:  the  fine  recklessness  of  it,  the  cour- 
age, the  hard  experience.  But,  be  all  these 
things  as  they  may,  it  is  not  my  purpose  at  this 
time  to  try  to  check  up,  as  the  accountants  say, 
all  the  items  of  the  account. 

The  third  age  of  leisure  remains  to  be  con- 
sidered. Its  coming  seems  to  have  been  asso- 
ciated with  the  rise  of  our  modern  democracy 
and  to  have  involved,  not  yet  by  any  means 
elimination  of  the  service  or  of  the  exploitation 
of  the  second  age,  but  significant  reduction  or 
modification  of  it.  The  great  motive  of  democ- 
racy might  be  said  to  be  liberation  of  men  from 

[147] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

some  condition  of  subjection  and  distribution 
of  the  leisure  attending  the  liberation  to  all  in 
some  portion  and  to  as  many  as  possible  in 
large  portion. 

Some  time  ago  writing  on  democracy*  I 
pointed  out  that  our  present  democracy,  judged 
not  abstractly  and  confusedly  with  any  demo- 
cratic movement  whatever,  as  if  democracy 
were  just  something  in  general,  but  historically 
and  for  the  actual  context  and  concrete  exper- 
iences and  purposes  of  its  rise,  involved  the 
coming  of  an  industrial  order  and  passing  of 
militarism  and  human  self-consumption  in  any 
form  and  that  the  great  democratic  ideas  of 
liberty  and  equality  and  natural  rights  should 
be  understood  accordingly,  being  given  their 
specific  and  relevant  or  contextual  meanings 
instead  of  taken  as  quite  general,  unqualified 
and  merely  eternal  —  as  empty  as  eternal !  — 
verities.  When  men  actually  call  for  equality 
and  natural  rights  they  are  in  protest  against 
some  specific  inequalities  and  some  visible  and 
no  longer  natural  and  warranted  restraint.  I 


*  "The    Duplicity    of   Democracy."      In    The    American.   Journal    of 
Sociology,  v.  XXI,  No.  1,  p.  1-14. 

[I48] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

pointed  out  also  that  the  change  from  a  military 
to  an  industrial  order  had  actually  brought  or 
was  rapidly  bringing  relief  to  mankind,  in  a 
most  important  respect  "letting  him  out  from 
under, ' '  and  also  it  was  even  my  notion,  in  spite 
of  the  strangeness  and  surprise  in  such  an  idea, 
that  the  very  contribution  which  industrialism 
seemed  thus  to  be  making  or  preparing  had  ac- 
tually been  made  possible  by  the  monarchical 
and  militaristic  regime  preceding  it.  Too  often 
we  are  given  to  thinking  of  new  eras,  new  dis- 
pensations, as  due  only  to  protests  against  what 
has  been  and  as  wholly  supplanting  the  past, 
whereas  the  new  may,  nay,  must  spring  posi- 
tively out  of  the  old,  coming  as  outgrowth  of 
experience  and  education,  the  appropriate  har- 
vest of  effort  and  intelligent  attention.  Can 
protest  itself  have  better  origin? 

Militarism,  which  already  we  have  associated 
with  the  dependence  of  society  for  its  safety, 
leisure  and  progress  on  human  service,  on  a 
servile  class,  has  been  so  much  human  nature, 
so  many  bodies  and  so  many  minds,  done  into 
machinery,  say  an  army  with  its  three  main  di- 

[149] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

visions,  one  for  domestic  service,  one  for  eco- 
nomic production,  a  third  for  national  defence : 
but  industrialism,  at  least  characteristically  or 
in  its  primary  tendency  and  motive,  has  been 
and  ever  more  obviously  and  consciously  is,  not 
human  nature,  but  outer  and  physical  nature  so 
treated,  man  being  in  so  far  relieved.  The 
former  has  depended  on  servants,  laborers,  sol- 
diers; the  latter,  ever  more  and  more,  on  ma- 
chinery, in  the  broadest  sense  on  "  labor- 
saving  "  machinery;  and,  as  I  think  and  am  here 
submitting,  the  very  possibility  of  the  latter 
has  come  about  by  a  certain  generalization  from 
the  former. 

Certainly  experience  and  its  education  always 
prompt  generalization,  involving  among  other 
things  the  change  of  a  condition  or  institute 
into  a  general  and  versatile  instrument,  of 
something  immediate  into  something  at  once 
more  general  and  objective  and  only  mediate. 
Apparently  men  had  to  be  themselves  the  inti- 
mate parts  or  cogs  in  a  machine,  as  soldiers  or 
servants  are,  before  they  could  be  set  free  from 
such  restraint  and  become,  as  with  our  democ- 


Ages  of  Leisure 

racy  and  its  rising  industrialism,  the  separate 
and  independent  users  of  machinery.* 

To  quote  now  a  single  sentence  from  the  cited 
paper  on  democracy:  "Industrialism  is  not  just 
militarism  supplanted,  but  militarism,  its 
power  and  system  and  organization,  become 
only  mediate  to  human  life  or  say  also,  if  I 
may  hope  to  be  understood,  militarism  and  its 
spirit  and  manner  vicarious  in  the  natural  en- 
vironment, militarism  at  least  in  process  of 
being  dehumanized  and  objectified."  And 
made,  too,  immeasurably  more  versatile !  What, 
then,  but  the  Iron  Man!  The  Army  Vicarious! 
Has  not  the  greatest  purpose  of  our  democracy 
been  to  effect,  so  far  as  possible,  just  such  de- 
humanization  and  objectification  in  the  machin- 
ery of  life;  through  external  machinery  to 
bring  leisure  and  the  opportunities  of  leisure, 
not  to  the  few,  but  even  to  all? 

Thus  in  the  great  historic  change  from  the 
medieval  ism  to  the  modern,  a  change  per- 
haps coming  decisively  to  its  own  only  in  our 


*  So  were  they  also  under  positive  law  before  they  became  freely 
and  generally  rational  or  mathematical ;  creatures  of  doctrine  or 
institution  and  defenders  of  the  faith  before  liberal  thinkers;  sub- 
jects of  a  monarch  before  all  royal;  in  spiritual  matters  penitents 
at  the  confessional  before  personally  and  independently  conscientious 
moral  beings. 

['Si] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

time  or  in  a  nearing  future,  we  see  man,  thanks 
to  Ms  training,  learning  at  last  en  masse  or 
communally  to  use  something  besides  himself 
for  carrying  out  his  purposes  and  we  may  be 
reminded  of  the  small  boy,  in  the  nursery  who, 
being  hit  in  the  head  by  a  bureau,  hit  back  with 
his  head,  but  some  days  later,  meeting  with  a 
similar  accident,  more  wisely  kept  his  head  to 
himself  and  threw  one  of  his  blocks  at  the 
offending  furniture.  Willie  made  history  just 
then,  the  history  of  industrialism  succeeding 
militarism;  of  mechanics  succeeding  institu- 
tionalism;  of  democracy  succeeding  aristocracy, 
of  some  leisure  for  all  by  machinery  succeeding 
leisure  for  a  few  by  human  service. 

Of  course  in  the  rise  of  democracy  and  in- 
dustrialism there  have  been  other  contributing 
factors  besides  the  gradual  fabrication  of  the 
Iron  Man.  This  great  automaton,  almost  a  lit- 
eral fulfillment  of  hopes  or  boasts  in  the 
eighteenth  century — was  it  not  Buff  on  (1707- 
88)  who  with  others  insisted  on  the  possibility 
of  an  animated  statue? — stands  out  or  rather 
in  all  its  power  and  versatility  moves  as  a  strik- 
ing witness  both  to  the  truth  and  reality  of  the 


Ages  of  Leisure 

world  which  has  been  disclosed  especially  by 
the  mathematical  sciences,  physics  and  mechan- 
ics, and  to  the  reason  of  men  and  their  self- 
control,  always  the  great  gift  of  reason.  Only 
reason  and  self-control  could  ever  have  made 
the  present  vicarious  instrumentation  of  life 
possible.  Could  there  have  been  manual  dex- 
terity in  use  of  tools  without  individual  co- 
ordination and  self-control!  Can  there  be, 
socially,  effective  use  of  machinery  where  there 
are  not  common  reason  and  corporate  or  co- 
operate control  ?  Still,  whatever  have  been  the 
other  factors  important  in  the  rise  and  pro- 
gress of  our  present  era,  the  great  automaton  is 
of  chief  interest  to  us  at  this  writing.  Its  gift 
of  leisure  must  far  surpass  that  of  human  ser- 
vice and  the  servile  classes. 

It  took  so  much  more  effort  and  skill  to  run 
the  old-fashioned  kitchen  stove  than  it  takes 
to  run  the  self-supplying,  possibly  self-lighting 
gas  range  of  today.  Now  one  man,  taught  how 
in  an  hour  or  two,  through  a  shortened  working 
day  tends  a  machine  that  does  work  which  even 
hundreds  not  very  many  years  ago  could  not 
do  in  a  week  or  perhaps  even  in  a  year.  At  the 

[153] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

earlier  time,  too,  each  one  of  the  throng  needed 
more  experience,  sometimes  including  a  long 
apprenticeship  or  a  long  special  training  of 
some  kind,  than  the  single  attendant  requires 
today.  Indeed  it  might  be  argued  that  the 
present  day  emphasis  on  technical  and  occupa- 
tional training  —  witness,  for  example,  the  in- 
creasing number  of  technical  and  professional 
schools  —  is  behind  the  times,  almost  suggest- 
ing the  closed  barn  after  the  loss  of  the  horse 
or  rather  the  locked  garage  after  theft  of  the 
horseless  and  automatic  carriage.  Excuse  me 
for  insisting  on  being  so  up  to  date.  Relatively 
to  other  needs  there  may  be  less  need  of  occu- 
pational training  now  than  there  used  to  be. 
Further,  not  to  stop  for  an  argument  and  to 
continue  my  discourse,  space  long  traversed 
only  with  great  difficulty  and  danger  is  now  no 
longer  a  serious  obstacle,  thanks  to  the  estab- 
lished and  standardized  system  of  quick  and 
reliable  transportation  and  communication. 
Equally  and  coincidently  limitations  of  time 
have  been  largely  overcome.  Even  eternity, 
some  over-profound  fellow  has  suggested,  is 
near  to  being  merely  a  great  Now.  In  all  de- 

[154] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

partments  of  life,  to  an  extent,  which  is  sur- 
prising when  first  remarked,  objective  system 
and  standardization  have  become  operative, 
changing  amazingly  our  distances  and  affecting 
not  less  the  quality  of  our  will.  Lastly,  even 
the  fine  arts,  notably  music  and  drama  and 
the  pictorial  or  representative  arts,  thanks  to 
wonderful  machinery,  are  in  everybody's  reach 
or  are  rapidly  getting  there,  requiring  neither 
the  effort  and  study  nor  in  others  ways  the  cost 
once  exacted.  And,  should  war  come,  so  at  least 
we  are  being  told,  a  few  men  in  an  air-plane, 
dropping  certain  bombs,  could  accomplish  in 
a  few  minutes  more  than  an  army  of  thousands 
on  a  long  campaign. 

In  short,  in  the  ways  of  peace  and  in  the  ways 
of  war  man  has  learned  greatly  to  spare  him- 
self, to  act  with  skill  and  power  through  some- 
thing else,  the  Giant  Automaton,  the  Vicarious 
Army,  and  so  to  have  for  good  or  for  ill,  no 
longer  just  a  single  leisured  class,  but  a  leisured 
democracy.  True,  democracy  and  a  certain 
freedom  were  achieved,  at  least  in  principle, 
early  in  the  present  era;  earthly  life,  personal 
liberty  and  property  rights  were  distributed  to 

[155] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

all  in  that  eighteenth  century;  but  today,  the 
animated  statue  having  actually  been  fabri- 
cated, the  freedom  is  becoming  more  positive 
and  substantial.  Then  it  was  freedom  - 
granted  if  not  always  realized  —  from  some- 
thing, being  in  the  main  only  security  from 
exploitation;  today  it  is  or  is  getting  to  be  free- 
dom to  do  something,  the  leisure  of  it  being  not 
just  security  but  leisure,  so  to  speak,  with  some 
time  to  spend;  and,  while  for  accuracy  in  any 
complete  estimate  of  conditions  at  the  present 
time  some  modification  or  discounting  of  what 
has  been  said  might  be  desirable,  while  much 
that  has  been  treated  as  at  least  measurably 
accomplished  may  really  represent  only  strong 
tendency  or  promise,  the  fact  of  the  new  leisure, 
different  from  the  old  in  its  source  and  meant, 
not  for  the  few  but  at  least  in  some  measure  for 
all,  would  seem  to  be  a  fact  of  the  time  that  no 
one  will  be  disposed  to  dispute.  Whatever 
other  meanings  may  properly  attach  to  the 
phrase,  now  so  often  heard,  "the  new  democ- 
racy, "  the  "next  step  in  democracy"  or  "in- 
dustrial democracy, "  this  idea  of  real  leisure 
for  all  must  be  included.  Should  it  be  treated 


Ages  of  Leisure 

as  a  fourth  " natural"  right,  earned  at  last? 
Earthly  life,  personal  liberty,  property  and 
leisure!  Leisure,  not  just  to  rest,  but  to  do 
something,  perhaps  something  pleasant  and 
diverting,  perhaps  something  cultural,  the  new 
right  of  all! 

And  leisure,  as  was  said  here  in  the  begin- 
ning, is  a  pressing  problem  of  the  day  at  least 
as  urgent  as  that  of  work.  Then  it  must  be 
faced.  With  shorter  hours  and  shorter  weeks 
and  increasing  mechanical  efficiency,  with  — 
for  so  some  insist  —  relatively  less  need  of 
occupational  training,  with  greater  wealth  and 
presumably  too  more  general  wealth,  with  the 
fine  arts  as  well  as  the  practical  arts  function- 
ing vicariously  in  machinery,  with  the  at  least 
possible  passing  of  militarism,  with  standard- 
ization and  quantity  production  and  dehuman- 
ization  in  so  many  departments  of  life,  this  prob- 
lem of  leisure,  I  say,  must  be  faced  squarely. 
Man,  so  it  would  appear,  unless  from  higher 
standards  of  living  or  from  increases  in  popu- 
lation the  demand  for  production  should  quite 
keep  pace  with  the  increased  efficiency,  is  to 
have  more  spare  time  per  capita  than  ever 

[is;] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

before  in  history  and  is  to  have  this  with  all 
the  opportunities  and  with  all  the  dangers. 
Civilization  must  look  to  her  defences  even 
while  she  wakens  to  new  ideals  and  purposes. 

By  what  "new  education/'  direct  or  indirect, 
may  man  be  made  fit  for  his  new  leisure  ?  Cer- 
tainly special  exaggeration  of  the  productive 
occupations  and  of  mere  technique,  with  for- 
getting of  things,  at  once  more  leisured  and 
more  cultural,  that  used  to  be  found  important, 
is  not  called  for.  Exactly  what  is  called  for,  I 
can  not  say,  not  being  at  all  clear  in  my  own 
mind.  A  few  reflections,  however,  results  of  an 
effort  at  thinking  to  a  solution,  may  carry  some 
pertinent  suggestions  and  these  reflections,  ac- 
cordingly, I  shall  write  down.  Of  one  thing 
only  do  I  feel  confident.  The  call  is  for  a  new 
culture. 

Now  —  the  reflective  now  —  if  the  new  leis- 
ure in  amount  and  importance  be  what  it  has 
appeared  to  be  and  if,  as  might  be  inferred,  the 
mingled  danger  and  opportunity  of  it  be  at  all 
in  proportion,  then  is  civilization  entering  upon 
an  adventure  for  romantic  character,  for  need 
of  wisdom  and  imagination  and  courage  far 


Ages  of  Leisure 

exceeding  anything  in  the  past.  Indeed  it 
would  seem  as  if  man  were  being  brought  to 
a  testing  the  like  of  which  he  has  not  even  dis- 
tantly approached  before. 

Analogies  from  the  past  are  often  interest- 
ing and,  although  of  course  at  best  only  analo- 
gies, they  may  be  helpful.  Already  they  have 
been  helpful  here  and  in  some  measure  they 
may  be  counted  upon  now  in  our  groping  into 
the  hidden  present,  which  is  the  future.  History 
is  ever  repeating  herself,  but  she  is  very  far 
indeed  from  a  slavish  copyist,  always  mixing 
original  creation  with  her  apparent  repetitions. 
The  past  may  not  rob  coming  adventure  of  its 
mystery;  it  may  only  give  reality  to  the  adven- 
ture by  its  dim  outlines  of  possibilities. 

The  past,  then,  shows  that  with  leisure  as 
gift  of  slavery  or  human  service  in  some  form 
the  leisured  group,  excepting  always  such  as 
have  spent  their  spare  time  idly  and  wastefully, 
has  rendered  in  its  own  way  a  real  service  by 
turning  to  the  fine  arts,  to  literature,  to  science 
and  to  philosophy.  Of  such  uses  of  leisure  in 
the  case  of  the  Greeks  mention  has  been  made. 
The  service  or  benefit  of  them  has  lain,  not  just 

[159] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

in  the  resulting  adornment  of  life,  worthy  as 
this  is,  but  also  and  especially  in  the  evolutional 
import,  the  challenge  of  routine  and  utility,  the 
meaning  for  progress,  which  such  valuations 
and  critical  interpretations  and  rational  explan- 
ations, of  life,  broadening  and  deepening  life 
as  they  have  by  their  ever  more  general  and 
more  objective  standpoint,  have  very  notably 
revealed  to  life  and  impressed  upon  it.  Once 
more  apology  for  cumbersome  language.  It  is 
surely  no  accident,  but  a  positive  contribution 
of  leisure,  that  in  the  past  such  culture  has 
been  the  forerunner  of  important  and  progres- 
sive, although  often  very  dramatic,  changes. 
Hardly  should  one  expect  progress  without 
dramatic  incidents  even  to  the  passing  of 
Golden  Ages  and  the  surrender,  for  loss  or 
gain,  of  whole  peoples. 

Whoever  thinks  of  leisure  and  its  culture  as 
only  so  much  aestheticism  or  intellectualism, 
valuing  culture,  if  at  all,  merely  for  its  orna- 
mentation or  possibly  for  its  use  as  a  fine  cloak 
for  idleness  and  extravagance,  has  quite  failed 
to  understand  its  most  important  role.  In  some 
sense  it  may  ornament  and  attractively  cloak 

[1*0] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

or  fortunately  hide  the  life  of  its  time,  mak- 
ing a  Golden  Age,  but,  be  this  as  may  be,  sooner 
or  later  it  has  to  find  its  fulfillment  in  a  new 
life,  having  wider  scope  and  deeper  meaning, 
and  in  a  more  comprehensive  and  more  skilfully 
devised  social  order.  A  Golden  Age  is  much 
like  a  sunset,  promise  of  another  day  when  the 
coming  night  be  passed.  The  ancient  culture, 
for  example,  notably  that  of  the  Greeks,  or  the 
new  culture  that  came  to  Christendom  with  the 
Renaissance  must  certainly  be  so  valued,  that 
is,  as  preceding  mystery  and  change,  as  invit- 
ing the  very  life  it  seems  to  adorn  to  historic 
surrender  and  adventure. 

Consider  how  in  a  leisured  culture,  in  art, 
in  science,  in  philosophy,  according  to  the  diff- 
erences in  the  measures  of  their  independence, 
there  has  always  been  some  challenge  of  estab- 
lished ways,  a  call  more  or  less  articulate  for 
a  new  medium.  Does  not  all  art  demand 
license!  Is  it  ever  art  if  not  creative!  Does 
not  science  observe  objectively,  looking  off  from 
things  human  and  traditional  at  what  is  natural 
or  real  and  so  different  if  not  even  quite 
negative!  Is  it  ever  science  if  in  its  reported 

[161] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

results  it  do  not  betray  human  tradition, 
discovering  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth? 
Does  not  philosophy  even  outrun  accurate 
methodical  and  objective  science,  being  essen- 
tially free  and  speculative?  Is  it  ever  phil- 
osophy, as  some  wise  humorist  might  say,  if 
it  do  not  see  best  with  its  eyes  closed?  Culture, 
then,  is  evolutional  and  on  any  other  terms, 
born  of  leisure,  it  would  not  be  loyal  to  its 
origin.  Romance,  not  domesticity;  novelty,  not 
familiarity;  invention,  not  imitation;  the  im- 
practical, not  the  "  practical, "  has  ever  been 
its  most  appropriate  interest  and  object.  Un- 
creative,  it  would  not  be  culture.  In  my  morn- 
ing paper  I  find  an  artist  insisting  that  art 
requires  surprise.  It  does  —  although  slap- 
stick surprises  are  hardly  good  art.  All  the 
leisured  disciplines  of  culture,  to  society's  dan- 
ger as  to  its  opportunity,  also  require  surprise, 
Art  is  no  exception.  Cubism  and  Futurism 
might  be  a  shade  less  bold  if  they  would  remem- 
ber the  past  and,  remembering,  appreciate 
among  some  other  things  that  surprise  is  a 
commonplace  of  all  culture  —  besides  being  an 
incident  of  all  evolution. 


Ages  of  Leisure 

The  past  shows  that  with  leisure  has  come 
culture.  Culture,  challenging  establishment, 
seeking  a  new  medium,  has  bred  historic  adven- 
ture, evolution.  Surprise  has  been  its  interest 
or  motive,  as  dangerous  as  opportune  and  worth 
while.  Wherefore,  by  analogy  from  the  past, 
what  of  the  third  age  of  leisure,  leisure  through 
the  Vicarious  Army,  the  Iron  Man,  the  Giant 
Automaton? 

Clearly  the  new  leisure  can  not  be  wholly  like 
the  old.  It  must  have  its  own  different  quality 
coming  as  it  does  from  such  a  different  source. 
Eiding  in  an  automobile  is  very  different  from 
riding  behind  animals  that  can  grow  weary  or 
from  being  carried,  with  literal  meaning  now 
or  in  metaphor,  by  one's  own  fellow  beings 
whose  fatigue  or  subordination  one  can  not  help 
feeling;  and,  generally,  leisure  through  auto- 
matic machinery  and  standard  impersonal  sys- 
tems must  be  very  different  indeed  in  its  qual- 
ity from  leisure  through  direct  human  ser- 
vice. In  so  many  ways  both  for  work  and 
for  leisure  we  are  living  in  a  world  of 
human  products  or  activities  with  the  human 
factor  itself  absent.  Do  we  even  half  realize 

[163] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

how  much  of  the  human  we  have  been  getting 
only  mediately,  by  what  have  sometimes  been 
called  expressively,  however  inelegantly,  the 
1 ' canning "  processes?  But  with  our  leisure  so 
different  in  its  quality  must  come  a  different 
quality  of  culture.  Neither  can  our  new  leisure 
be  like  the  old  nor  can  the  culture  rising  from 
it  be  mere  repetition  of  anything  that  has  been. 
Does  the  wide  dependence  on  the  "  canning " 
processes  mean  serious  loss,  a  lessening  of  the 
importance  of  the  human  factor,  the  human 
touch?  Many  will  doubtless  think  so.  An  age 
of  machinery  and  instrumental  automatism 
seems  cold  to  them.  They  lament  the  passing 
of  the  artisans  of  the  old  days  and  of  hand-made 
articles.  A  recent  English  writer  *  decries  and 
even  resents  the  conditions  of  our  time,  seeing 
no  advantage  at  all  in  them,  only  danger  and 
distinct  loss;  only  speed  and  complexity  and 
lifeless  or  soulless,  however  skilful  instrumenta- 
tion, elaborate  and  futile  and  purposeless,  quite 
too  automatic  for  real  human  value.  But, 
natural  as  this  view  may  be  as  a  first  reaction, 


*  Social  Decay  aiid  Regeneration.  By  B.  Austin  Freeman.     Houghton 
Mifflin  Co.,  1921. 

[I64] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

it  can  not  be  the  final  view.  Even  true  as  it 
probably  is  to  feelings  we  have  all  had,  as 
from  day  to  day  we  have  moved  about  in  the 
standard  milieu  of  our  time,  reflection  and 
revision  are  imperative.  The  meaning  of  it  all 
conceivably  may  be  or  presumptively  must  be, 
not  a  lessening  of  the  importance  of  the  human 
factor,  but  its  great  enhancement.  The  wider 
and  more  successful  life's  instrumentation,  the 
deeper  and  fuller  the  meaning,  the  profounder 
the  value,  of  the  life  which  is  served.  If  leisure 
and  its  culture  are  a  challenge  of  the  instru- 
ment, the  instrument  in  its  turn  just  by  its 
efficiency  challenges  life's  values  and  purpose. 
Between  his  lines  that  English  author  is  really 
putting  this  question:  What  now  is  our  new 
human  purpose!  What  the  new  life,  the  new 
humanism  that  the  Giant  Automaton  is  making 
possible?  New,  but  at  the  same  time,  as  with 
other  "  repetitions  "  in  history,  carrying  on  for 
the  old? 

Our  automatic  machinery  means,  as  we  have 
seen,  quantity  production  in  practically  ail  of 
the  needs  and  also  in  the  diversions  of  life  and 
so  a  wide  distribution,  carrying  to  the  people 

[165] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

at  large  what  formerly  only  the  few  could  have. 
Not  only  are  the  telephone  and  the  automobile 
coming  nearer  within  reach  of  every  one,  but 
nearly  every  one  may  hear  the  great  music  of 
the  time  and  see  the  great  play.  The  idea  of 
the  public  utility  or  of  public  conveyance  and 
convenience  has  been  getting  ever  wider  appli- 
cation. In  fact,  in  view  of  all  the  conditions, 
one  may  well  be  reminded  of  a  sort  of  prototype 
and  miniature  of  our  times,  the  ancient  city- 
state,  in  which  every  free  citizen  had  a  directly 
conscious  part  in  the  life  of  the  community, 
voting  in  the  assembly  and  attending  the  latest 
play.  Only  now  it  is  the  Automatic  Man,  not 
slavery,  that  makes  the  free  citizenship  and 
gives  solidarity  to  the  community  and  in  size 
and  complexity,  as  well  as  in  the  quality  of  life, 
the  modern  community  is  to  the  ancient  as  the 
automatic  machinery  to  the  slavery  in  efficiency 
and  versatility.  So  in  the  new  life  of  today, 
whatever  losses  some  may  discover,  there  is 
emphatically  something  still  appealing  to  warm 
and  lively  human  interest  and  the  appeal,  I  need 
hardly  say,  is  insistent  and  profound. 

Morever,  as  will  be  recognized  and  appre- 

[166] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

elated,  in  the  past  each  new  step  in  the  instru- 
mentation of  life  —  two  such  steps  we  have  seen, 
both  of  them  in  the  second  age  of  leisure, 
domestic  slavery  and  socially  institutional 
slavery  and  we  are  now  considering  a  third,  the 
Automatic  Man  —  each  new  step  has  brought 
with  it,  not  merely  as  some  might  prefer  to 
have  it  said  and  as  a  superficial  view  of  the 
facts  may  have  indicated,  reaction  to  something 
forgotten  and  thereupon  restored,  but  a  dis- 
tinctly new  valuation,  a  really  new  and  different 
humanism,  involving  greater  freedom,  greater 
versatility,  new  types  of  association,  communi- 
cation and  exchange  and  at  once  a  deeper  per- 
sonality and  a  more  comprehensive  and  more 
complex  sphere  of  interest  and  action.  Again 
and  again  in  the  past  with  a  changing  instru- 
mentation, with  new  utilities,  the  human  or 
humanistic  has  seemed  to  die,  in  the  feeling  of 
some  lost  for  ever;  but  at  each  change  the 
proclamation  has  soon  been  heard:  L'homme 
est  mort;  vive  Phomme!  The  Automatic  Man, 
then,  is  not  now  sounding,  among  his  other 
notes  or  strains,  the  death-knell  of  the  human 
factor  nor,  most  emphatically,  is  he  on  the  other 

[167] 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

hand  blowing  a  trumpet  for  the  mere  resurrec- 
tion of  a  former  and  now  out-grown  humanism 
and  its  culture. 

Yes,  the  new  leisure  of  our  era  simply  must 
be  bringing  its  own  specific  culture,  its  own 
mutation  of  human  values.  What  the  new 
forms  may  be  or  how  by  education,  of  course 
a  new  education,  the  people  at  large  may  be 
brought  to  meet  the  new  culture  to  their  benefit 
instead  of  to  their  harm,  I  am  still  at  a  loss  to 
say.  I  am,  too,  probably  quite  as  weary  as 
any  others  with  the  general  newism,  the  new 
this  and  the  new  that,  which  from  painting  to 
politics,  from  jazz  to  philosophy  has  so  affected 
the  times.  By  and  large  it  has  so  far  probably 
been  more  an  affectation  or  a  dissipation  than 
anything  at  all  substantial.  Yet,  even  so,  it  is 
a  symptom  not  to  go  unnoticed.  A  new  culture, 
in  important  respects  advancing  on  the  old, 
must  be  near  at  hand.  Inarticulate  at  the 
moment,  impulsive,  blind,  startling  and  often 
offensive,  it  is  still  even  now  to  be  reckoned 
with.  We  are  told  of  the  new  poets  that  "they 
must  say  something  different  and  surprising," 
but  that  "so  far  they  hardly  know  what  to  say, ' ' 

[168] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

or  still  worse,  "have  nothing  to  say."  In  any 
branch,  the  new  culture,  be  it  art  so  adventurous 
as  to  shock  or  science  so  materialistic  as  to 
strike  negatively  at  cherished  conceits  or  phil- 
osophy so  irrational  as,  quite  after  Socrates,  to 
"corrupt  youth"  and  to  "do  dishonor  to  the 
gods,"  must  be  reckoned  with;  not,  of  course, 
accepted  on  its  face,  not  swallowed  whole,  but 
met  squarely  and  considered  honestly.  Chal- 
lenge of  the  Giant  Automaton  and  its  "canned" 
culture  has  required  courage  and  could  but  be 
inarticulate  at  first.  Of  course,  were  culture  only 
for  its  own  sake,  had  it  no  relation  to  the  con- 
text of  the  practical  life  and  were  it  of  no  evo- 
lutional value,  as  many  have  sometimes  seemed 
to  think  or  wish,  the  mere  recall  of  a  former 
culture  probably  would  quite  suffice  and  would 
indeed  be  ' i  safer. '  '  Eeally  the  pragmatic  test, 
if  such  be  this  of  contextual  relevancy  or  of 
evolutional  value,  would  be  quite  impertinent 
now  for  any  culture  already  past  and  out- 
grown. A  past  and  outgrown  culture  would  now 
be  aloof  and  be  only  for  culture's  sake  and  for 
life's  museums.  A  present  culture,  surprising 
and  adventurous,  vital  as  well  as  cultured, 


Two  Essays  of  Progress 

serves  the  inevitable  future,  pertaining  to  and 
awakening  the  very  life  it  surprises. 

I  shall  be  misunderstood.  Too  often  to  say  any- 
thing is  unavoidably  to  go  beyond  one's  mean- 
ing. Would  I  spoil  a  much  cherished  belief? 
Lowell,  as  I  recall,  only  joining  many  others 
found  the  beauty  of  the  ancient  culture,  notably 
the  Greek  literature,  in  its  being  "contempor- 
aneous with  our  own  day,"  coming  to  us  a  fam- 
iliar memory,  "a  veritable  Mnemosyne."  In- 
deed, as  he  insists,  culture  is  universal,  making 
its  appeal  to  mankind  of  any  time  and  any 
clime.  I  may  be  adorning  his  tale  a  little ;  but, 
as  he  seems  to  say,  the  more  practical  and 
more  sordid  things  of  life  come  and  go,  while 
the  things  of  the  spirit,  among  them  culture 
with  its  art,  its  music,  its  literature,  are  "uni- 
versal ' '  and  ' '  eternal. ' '  Indeed  they  are  —  ab- 
stractly. Those  words  have  always  a  certain 
magic.  One  may  conjure  with  them  confidently, 
as  always  with  abstractions.  But  morals  and 
gods  and  cultures  also  come  and  go.  To  Lowell's 
enthusiasm  for  the  ancients  and  his  fellow- 
feeling  with  them,  rather  momentary  than  char- 
acteristic in  his  case,  I  have  to  respond  warmly, 

[170] 


Ages  of  Leisure 

until  the  spell  passes,  and  then  I  take  exception. 
I  have  to  deepen  the  fine  universality,  the 
eternal  fellowship,  of  cultures  with  candid  re- 
gard for  their  local  and  historical  differences. 
Even  like  democracy,  culture  must  be  relevant 
to  its  times  and  their  instrumentation,  which  it 
defies,  and  must  win  its  place  in  the  universal 
and  eternal  and  especially  its  right  to  so  noble 
a  companionship  by  its  timely  service. 

To  take  interest  today  only  in  quantity  pro- 
duction and  traditional  accumulation,  to  value 
only  the  professional  and  occupational,  only 
technique  and  efficiency,  to  be  merely  a  con- 
servative, complacent  or  aggressive,  in  politics 
or  economics  or  social  life  or  religion,  to  make 
use  of  one's  leisure  idly  or  wastefully,  to  have 
no  active  interest  in  what  is  impractical  and 
adventurous,  is  doubtless  to  add  to  one 's  chances 
of  getting  rich;  but  also  it  is  to  fall  behind 
the  history,  now  by  dint  of  the  challenge  of  the 
Iron  Giant  in  the  making,  and  is  so  to  lose, 
except  as  a  slave,  any  place  or  part  in  the  real 
life  of  the  time. 


14  DAY  USE 

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